


A Little Nonsense Now and Then

by Braindepository



Category: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - All Media Types
Genre: broadway musical verse, one shots and drabbles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-01-30 15:28:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 27,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12656286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Braindepository/pseuds/Braindepository
Summary: Mike Teavee-centric one shots and drabbles to keep my writer's block at bay.  Prompts accepted!





	1. Prompt: Charlie Bucket

**Author's Note:**

> Like the summary says: a collection of drabbles based on the Broadway musical to keep my writer's block at bay while I work on some longer fics. Feel free to drop a prompt in a review, or DM me on tumblr at https://itsteaveetime.tumblr.com/

In the immediate aftermath of the Golden ticket tour, the Chocolate News was not entirely accurate.

“Could there be two grand prize winners of Wonka’s wonderous contest?” Jerry Jubilee had reported, with the sort of serious gravitas appropriate to the situation. “We’re live with Cherry Sundae. Cherry, where are you?”

“Jerry, I’m outside the Wonka Chocolate factory!” Cherry had chirped back. “It looks like the Gloops have flown the coop, and the Salts and Beauregardes are…currently recovering with qualified medical professionals which I don’t feel comfortable rhyming about. But little Charlie Bucket and Mike Teavee have yet to leave the factory!”

(Mike had left the factory. They just hadn’t seen him leave the factory. No one had.)

Wonka’s contract is surprisingly iron-clad for something that was mostly sung through, and as a result, not even the Russians had been willing to leak anything to the press. But they had sussed out, after a few days, that Charlie was the winner. They referred to Mike (and sometimes still do) as the runner up. 

(Which Mike does not know about for a pretty long time, because Mike is shrunk, and it is a waking nightmare.)

Mike Teavee is not the runner up. If, for whatever reason, Charlie is ever unable to fulfill his duties as chocolatier, Mike will not take his place.

But Mike does go back to the factory.

He’s struck up a strange sort of friendship with Wonka (over the internet, obviously). It’s weird to develop a grudging respect (and then later, just plain respect) for the adult who made absolutely sure you suffered head trauma, but Mike is weird and Wonka is weirder, and Mike is also: not growing correctly. The injections and pills and supplements and exercises top out after a while, and Mike is left at a normal human height for a child, that is not as tall as he once was, and the likelihood that he will be that height for life. Wonka is surprisingly sympathetic and willing to do something about that.

So far, the taffy puller has worked the best out of everything, but he does tend to shrink back down a bit after a time, so it’s not a permanent fix, and does require that Mike regularly leave the house (not necessarily the worst thing for him) to visit Wonka’s and get re-stretched. 

Mike knows there’s no way he will never run into Charlie Bucket.

That’s about all Mike knows about Charlie Bucket.

Well, the kid was poor, he knows that. Didn’t have electricity (???). But all that’s changed now.

Oh, and: he’s good. Exactly the kind of good kid that adults want kids to be and Mike can’t understand no matter how hard he tries and therefor he assumes it’s just faking. He’s not particularly enthused about the idea of running into the ultimate Golden Ticket Winner.

(Because, fortunes reversed, in Bucket’s shoes, if Mike were Charlie: he doesn’t think he’d like the idea of having the runner up in the house.)

He is in no way trying to usurp. But. He does (despite himself) like talking to Wonka. It has, along with the man himself, become something important to him. But adults only have so much time (and…affection) to go around, don’t they? That’s what it seems like to Mike, and he’s definitely leeching that from Charlie, if so. That was part of Charlie’s prize along with everything else: Wonka. Mike is just stealing.

But it’s Bucket’s factory as much as Wonka’s, so Mike is not surprised when the other boy is the one to greet him. He is surprised by how.

He hadn’t been at all sure what to expect of the kid. (Would Bucket be some kind of mini-Wonka now, complete with top hat and cane?) It still throws him what he gets. A Charlie Bucket grinning earnestly and enthusiastically, wearing a top hat, but also a t-shirt and shorts and cool sneakers, and holding something unidentifiable in one hand.

“Hi Mike!” Charlie says, waving with one hand, and holding up the thing he’s clutching in the other. “Look: I found a frog!”

He has, indeed, found a frog. The frog looks nonplussed. 

“…Hey,” Mike replies, his own hands shoved in his pockets. His voice comes out even flatter than he means it to, which it does sometimes, but at least it doesn’t sound un-cool. “…s’up.”

Charlie continues to grin at him. Charlie continues to grin all day. He chatters as they walk through the factory. His enthusiasm is contagious. Mike has to work very hard to keep his cool kid mask from slipping. He looks to the un-enthused frog for inspiration.

He’s not sure what Bucket’s angle is.

“Does it hurt?” Charlie wants to know, about the taffy puller. Maybe he wants it to hurt? But no, he just seems honestly concerned.

“Nah,” Mike sniffs. It doesn’t, but he wouldn’t have admitted it if it did.

Charlie does not look like he is sure Mike is telling the truth. Maybe that’s it. He’s looking to call Mike out; make Wonka change his mind about…whatever seems to have made him change his mind about Mike in the first place, because Mike hasn’t changed, has he? Mike is still bad; a terror; delinquent; ball of awfulness and no filter. Terrible. Should be blocked. 

Bucket is looking at him, and Mike doesn’t know. He ‘doesn’t know’ a lot. Mike is a genius; he should know. Everybody else seems to. They get what people mean, what they want, what they want you to say, even with their dumb, non-genius brains. But he doesn’t and it makes him feel stupid, and that makes him feel angry.

“What?” He spits at Bucket, whose dumb smile finally falters a little, which makes Mike feel a little better.

“I dunno,” Charlie shrugs.

He knows. Mike clenches his fists.

“I know it’s yours, okay?” Mike practically shouts. “I know it’s all yours!”

(Wonka included.)

Charlie Bucket blinks at him. Charlie Bucket furrows his brows. Charlie Bucket says:

“…it’s okay if you like it here. I do. I think everybody should. It’s awesome.”

Mike does like it here. But Charlie doesn’t stop there.

“It’s okay,” he says, “if you like him.”

Something inside of Mike’s chest crumbles.

“Yeah,” Mike mumbles at the toes of Charlie’s sneakers, because he’s wrong again, of course, like he always is about stuff that’s not numbers or computers, so basically: all people.

“He’s awesome too,” Charlie says. “And there are so many amazing things you guys didn’t get to see here yet. This factory’s got everything. Well. Almost everything. There’s…no other kids my age…”

Oh.

He glances up at Bucket, and yes: the other boy looks hopeful.

“I’m older than you,” Mike points out.

(Mike is one year older than Charlie.) 

“I don’t mind,” Charlie says, brightly, grin back in place. 

(Mike doesn’t mind either.)

“Do you want to hold my frog?” Charlie asks, extending the creature towards him.

“Gross,” Mike laughs.

(Mike does kind of want to hold that frog.)

Wonka finds them in a bit, sitting cross-legged on the floor, the frog in between them.

“Bye Mike!” Charlie says, grinning earnestly and enthusiastically, when it is the end of the day and Mike’s mother has come to collect him. “I’ll see you soon?”

Now Mike knows Charlie Bucket.


	2. Prompt: Wigs

The weirdest thing, of all the weird things, is when Wonka takes off his top hat.

With his top hat on, Willy Wonka is vibrant, and zany, and unstoppable. With his top hat off, Wonka is old.

As old as Mike’s mom. Maybe even older. His hairline recedes from just above his temples and thins over the top of his head. He speaks normally. He owns blandly colored sweater vests. It’s hard to reconcile this Wonka, with the hat-wearing one.

In Idaho, in his bathroom (which is horribly Pepto pink and baby blue and inexplicably carpeted), Mike takes off his hat and examines his own hair. It’s very dark, very thick, and a little bit frizzy. He pushes his long bangs aside, raises his mom’s good sewing scissors, and starts snipping. His hair, which is a hacked-off mess in the back, continues to look the same. He snips at it some more. He snips until he has snipped one side of his hair down to stubble. 

Mike doesn’t always game through dinner, so Ethel is not shocked when he saunters into the kitchen, plops down in a chair, and begins to peel the tinfoil off of his plate. She glances up at him from her own plate. And then glances up again.

“Why,” she says.

He scowls at her.

“What?” He replies.

“What did you do to your hair???” She asks, exasperation creeping into her voice.

“Noooooooothing,” he insists, sulkily. 

She’s up and pawing at his head and he tries to smack her away.

“I don’t even know how to fix this,” Ethel grumbles.

He throws his mashed potatoes in her face.

“I’m sorry Mr. Wonka,” Ethel says into his phone, later, when Wonka calls, because Mike has not been online all day, and that means something is wrong. “Michael is banned from the phone and computer right now for cutting off half his hair and throwing mashed potatoes.”

“Half of his hair,” Mike can hear Wonka repeat from where he is sulking in a rocking chair facing a corner, because his useless mother has somehow switched on the speaker-phone. 

“I do have a hair toffee,” Wonka continues. “How do you feel about beards? And it won’t help with the potatoes, I’m afraid.”

“Who would want a beard?” Mike yells at the corner.

“I can’t hear you, Michael, you’re banned from the phone,” Wonka replies. “Best of luck, Mrs. T.”

Later than that, when Mike’s ban has been lifted, and his snipping has been evened out with a pair of clippers, he asks Wonka:

“If you made a toffee that grows hair, why don’t you use it?”

“Me? I’ve already had a beard,” Wonka answers.


	3. Prompt: Augustus Gloop

“Hallo!”

Augustus Gloop stands in (takes up all of, really) the doorway dressed in a meticulously knitted ninja costume, and Mike Teavee does not understand how he got roped into this.

The German boy and his mother are visiting, and it is Halloween, and Mike cannot get Gus to accept that at thirteen, he is too old to go trick or treating. At first he had thought the other boy didn’t get it. But Gloop isn’t as dumb as he looks (he’s just: German). He gets it, he just doesn’t accept it. And Augustus Gloop is a boy with the perseverance to eat through fifty Wonka bars in the middle of an entirely separate breakfast. His insides are steel. He will not be swayed. It is Halloween and there is American candy to be had.

“Me too, I am not from here,” Augustus had pointed out. “So you must take me, Michael. That is what there is to it.”

Completely immovable.

Their mothers insist on taking pictures.

“When he was nine, he had the cutest little cowboy costume,” Ethel tells the Germans.

“Shutupshutupshutup,” Mike growls, from beneath a faintly disturbing black goat mask with glowing red eyes. “Can we go already?” 

His mother looks them up and down.

“Michael, where are your safety wristbands?” She asks.

“I’m not wearing the safety wristbands, mom,” he groans.

“What is this safety wristbands?” Mrs. Gloop asks.

“They glow in the dark so he doesn’t get hit by a car wearing all black,” Mrs. Teavee explains, gesturing at Mike, who is wearing all black.

“I’m not wearing the safety wristbands mom!” He says again, louder and faster.

“I also cannot wear glowing wristbands, Mrs. Michael’s mother,” Augustus explains, very seriously. “I am a ninja.”

He twirls a knitted set of nun-chucks in the air, and then drags Mike away to meet his trick or treating fate.

It isn’t…actually that bad.

It’s outside, and it’s a little chilly, but it’s not as chilly as Idaho usually is in late October. He can’t really see his phone through his mask, but Gus mostly manages to distract him from the withdrawal symptoms. And none of his neighbors recognize him.

Because Mike Teavee doesn’t go trick or treating, and Mike Teavee especially doesn’t go trick or treating with a friend, because Mike Teavee doesn’t have friends.

Augustus Gloop is the perfect disguise, basically. Everyone smiles at him, and compliments their costumes. No one gives them the crap candy, or eyes him suspiciously, or downright refuses to open the door when they see who it is.

That doesn’t completely suck.

After each house, he looks through one of his glowing goat eyes at his haul, and then chucks it all in Gus’ bag. Gus looks at him in confusion, but doesn’t argue. After about the fifth time he has done this, Gus asks:

“You do not like candy?”

“I like candy,” Mike says, with a shrug. They did, after all, meet at a candy factory.

“Then why do you give me all of yours?” Augustus asks.

“Because I already have candy I want to eat at home,” Mike explains.

“But Michael,” Augustus tells him, very slowly, “this is more candy.”

Mike rolls his human eyes behind his goat eyes.

“Yeah, but I can only eat like one bar at a time or I get a stomach ache,” he admits.

Augustus stares at him from beneath his blunt blond bangs.

“It’s a side effect. From my meds,” Mike continues.

Augustus rests a plump hand gently on Mike’s shoulder.

“Michael,” he says. “This is the saddest thing I have heard in all my German life.”

“Just take the candy, Gus,” Mike insists. Because while no, it’s not a fun side effect, and none of them are, something about Gus’ earnest melodramatics about it makes it less of an annoyance. It’s hard to be really cheesed off about something that is the saddest thing an obese boy has heard in all his German life. 

“I have not said no,” Augustus points out, with a grin.

They wind their way though Normalton’s suburban streets, with the rest of Normalton’s suburban youth until Augustus’ bag starts to overflow with fun-sized candy.

“I appreciate you, Michael,” Augustus says, as they make their way back to Mike’s house.

“You appreciate me what?” Mike prompts, waiting for the rest of whatever Augustus is trying to say to translate.

“I appreciate you,” the German boy says again. “I know you did not want to do this, but you let me make you.”

Mike shrugs.

“I guess I’ve done stuff that sucked worse, but don’t make a big deal out of it, okay?”

“Oh no,” Gus says, shaking his head and beginning to snack on peanut butter cups to keep his strength up. “And I think that we have protected your reputation also. Mostly I have. With my ninja skills.”

The German boy grins at him again. Mike pushes his mask back and gives him a Look with a capital ‘L’, then pushes the larger boy in the shoulder. It’s the sort of horseplay that would normally push another boy off balance, but Augustus is larger than any other boy. He will not be swayed. 

Mike is okay with that.


	4. Prompt: Sweater

Mike Teavee stands shivering and dripping on the floor of Wonka’s office, skinny arms wrapped around himself, face set in stubborn defiance despite his chattering teeth. He jerks his chin at the neatly folded pile of neutral colored clothing in Wonka’s hands.

“I’m not wearing that,” he says.

Not all accidents at the Wonka Chocolate factory are fantastical. For instance, sometimes pipes break, and it isn’t anyone’s fault, but certain visiting technology addicts get drenched with the frigid water from an air conditioning unit, and really need to get into some dry clothes before they catch pneumonia.

Certain technology addicts are being difficult about it.

“Mike, really. You’re too big for anything of Charlie’s-…”

Even Mike’s feet are bigger than Charlie’s feet, a fact Mike seems to take some solace in.

“…Grandpa George is the closest to your size. They’ll still be a little big, but it’s only temporary,” Wonka points out. “We could see about growing you into them, but I don’t think your mother would appreciate it if I returned you looking like Augustus Gloop.”

“I’m not wearing old people clothes,” Mike hisses. “I’d rather freeze.”

But he wouldn’t, of course. Not really. He’s struck by a particularly violent shiver, and all Wonka has to do is extend the dry clothes pointedly. Mike makes a frustrated noise, snatches the clothes from him, and stomps to the bathroom.

Well. Squelches.

Wonka takes a seat. Waits. Waits. Waits…

“Problem, Michael?”

“Not coming out,” Mike mumbles from the other side of the bathroom door.

“That will make it particularly easy to use the bathroom,” Wonka points out. “But it doesn’t sound very entertaining.”

The door opens slowly. The butterfly emerges from its cocoon.

Mike Teavee looks miserable. His still damp dark hair hangs limply around his pale face. He’s had to cuff George’s tan trousers. His white t-shirt is also oversized, but he seems the most distressed about the light grey, cable knit cardigan that has been thrust upon him. It’s very ‘Mr. Rogers’, and Mike holds his arms away from his sides like it might be contagious. He casts a glum glance towards Wonka’s desk, where his phone rests in a container full of rice. It cannot help him now.

“I look like a total dork!” He whines.

Wonka has ducked into the bathroom to retrieve Mike’s momentarily useless clothing. It is all folded in the sink, not strewn in puddles across the floor like he had half expected it to be. Even Mike’s soaked sneakers are balanced on top of the pile. He calls for an Oompa to transport it all down to the laundry room, and take great care not to shrink anything, even if in his opinion Mike’s usual pants could stand to be a bit less baggy. That is the horrible style, apparently.

He returns to his office.

“Not a total dork,” he tells the boy, intentionally implying that total is the operative word and missing the mark on comfort by a wide margin.

But it is true: Mike does not look like himself.

He looks very small. He is a small boy, and always has been, and has also been much much smaller, of course. But this is a different sort of small: a weak sort of small. Mike Teavee is tough. Not actually tough, but he manages to talk like he is, and seem like he might be. The cardigan seems to have sucked all of that right out of him. He does not seem sure how to be…Mike, at the moment.

“They’re just clothes,” Wonka says. “They aren’t who you are.”

“I know,” Mike grouses. “But they are too. Like what you want people to think about you. Who you want people to think you are. Like I bet this is totally who my mom wants people to think I am.”

“I think your mother would prefer a much more vintage aesthetic, but that’s not really my point,” Wonka says. “I’m completely confident you’re entirely capable of dastardly delinquency regardless of how you’re dressed.”

“Yeah,” Mike agrees. “But people won’t know I’m cool.”

“How to put this…” Wonka begins.

“Don’t even think about it, Old Man,” Mike says, eyes narrowed dangerously, and also looking somewhat more Mike-like.

“I was only going to say you aren-…”

“I said don’t! Look. You wouldn’t dress like how you dress, if you didn’t want people to think stuff about you. …Whatever that is,” Mike insists, eyeing Wonka’s garish ensemble.

“I don’t always dress like this,” Wonka counters.

Mike snorts.

“I know. It weirds me out. In your, like, suburban dad gear? Casual Wonk. So freaky.”

“Well, frankly Michael,” Wonka tells him, adjusting his tie and smoothing his wounded pride. “I don’t care what you think. I dress how I want. And I’ll have you know that the particular outfit to which I know you are referring is a disguise for when I have to conduct important market research.”

“Whatever!” Mike says. “I dress how I want too, and this isn’t it!”

The chocolatier pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Michael. I am only saying: the opinions of others needn’t matter quite so much. You are much more than this.”

He waves his cane at all of Michael’s currently frumpily dressed outer shell.

Michael is quiet for a moment.

“I guess,” he agrees, finally and unsure-ly.

There is a soft knock on the door. Mrs. Bucket has appeared there, deftly finishing embroidering something. It is, Wonka can see when she presses it against Michael’s temporary sweater, a patch shaped like a skull. She fastens it to the boy with large safety pins, like young people who are fans of particularly loud and discordant music often do. She peers at him a moment, then ruffles his hair. Mrs. Bucket is one of few people who are capable of touching Michael’s hair without being bitten. His hair spikes up obediently under her fingers.

“Better,” she declares.

And just like that: he’s Mike Teavee again. Cocky. Smirky. Slouchy. Bratty. Full of himself, and successfully able to hide almost all self-loathing.

“Really?” Wonka says, flatly.

“Uh huh,” Mike replies, Mike mode fully activated. “See: she knows what’s cool.”


	5. Prompt: The Miracle of Judaism (Mike/Violet)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "'The Miracle of Judaism' in which Mike has his Bar Mitzvah and invites Violet because she's *kind* of cute. (Could feature other characters idk)."

Mike Teavee taught himself C++, Java, Perl, LISP, and Python while other kids his age were still getting a handle on inches and centimeters, but Hebrew is hard.

He isn’t good at talking. He says a lot (more than a lot of people would like him to). But he isn’t great at saying stuff. Not how it should be said; not the right way, and vocal inflection sometimes escapes him completely.

There are challenges he likes (video games, hacking, math), because they make sense; are conquerable even if time consuming. This? He doesn’t know. Boys before him have done it. It’s do-able. But his mouth doesn’t want to cooperate, and Mike’s body does not respond to programming like a reasonable thing should, and why can’t everybody just speak English? This is America. This is Idaho.

He hasn’t been to temple in a while, either, so that’s working against him too. But winning a world famous chocolate contest buys a lot of forgiveness, and he and his mom are suddenly welcome a lot of places again, and Mike doesn’t care…

But Ethel is so happy. So proud. 

And Mike gets that he’s a lot. (Do people not realize he has to deal with himself 24/7?) And as much as she gets on his nerves, she’s also…all he has.  
Mike isn’t really sure he believes in anything, but he’ll do this for her, and then that’s all she gets for a while. She’ll maybe even owe him.

There’s another problem, though.

“Who do you want to invite? To your Bar Mitzvah?” His mother asks.

And nothing comes out of Mike’s mouth.

Because the kids around here suck, and he wasn’t friends with them even when he did go to school with them. They’d probably come now; maybe spend the whole party asking stuff about Wonka that he’s not legally allowed to answer. But so what?

Mike rolls his eyes at her and turns his attention back to his iPhone, and Ethel surrenders, for the moment.

“Who do you want to invite to your Bar Mitzvah?” His mother asks, again, a few weeks later.

“Not dad,” Mike mutters, not even looking up from his Nintendo Switch.

Ethel is silent and still for a moment, before nodding once. She invites all his dumb cousins and Uncles and Aunts though: the ones that stopped inviting them to/coming around for Thanksgiving and stuff. Whatever. As long as he gets gift cards.

“Michael,” his mother asks, exasperated, as the date draws near. “Who do you want to invite to your Bar Mitzvah.”

“Violet Beauregarde,” he says.

It just comes out. Tumbles from his lips before he has a chance to think; to stop it.

He’s been following her on Twitter since the factory, and more recently: Instagram. And Snapchat. He hates accounts like hers: it’s all selfie after selfie after OOTD after sponcon for lip glosses that all look alike to him, and weird teas that he’s ninety-nine percent sure she has never even touched.

But for some reason he can’t unfollow. She purses her lips at her camera and he hits like. It makes zero sense, but he also can’t help but respect that kind of clout. She’s as much a computer wiz as he is, she just doesn’t deal in code.

And at least she follows him back. For all her thousands of followers, she only follows a handful of people, and he is one of them. He posts gaming memes he’s pretty sure she doesn’t get, and she hits like anyway. She liked his new sneakers. She liked his new haircut.

“Violet Beauregarde,” he says.

His mother looks at him strangely. It’s a cross between confused, surprised, pleased, and afraid. He stares defiantly and flatly back at her cocktail of emotions.

“…Alright,” Ethel says, eventually.

An invite is mailed to California. An email is also sent.

“I didn’t know you two were friends,” Ethel says.

Mike shrugs.

“It’s a long way to travel. If she can’t make it, I’m sure it doesn’t mean-…”

“Shut up, mom!” Mike yells, stomping to his room and shutting the door.

He practices the stupid Haftarah until he can say it in his sleep.

“I didn’t know you were Jewish,” Violet Beauregarde says.

She is the shiniest thing in Idaho. She is practically a cloud of glitter and rhinestones and velvet, and Mike doesn’t usually like textures, but on her: it works. Her ridiculously tiny backpack bounces between her shoulder blades as she struts through his boring suburban town. Her hips move in a way that he doesn’t think Idaho girls are capable of. He also isn’t sure why he thinks that.

“It’s not like I talk about it,” he shrugs. “It’s not a big deal. I just have to make a bunch of weird noises and then people give me stuff.”

“Oooooh, swag,” Violet grins. “But there’s, like, dancing and stuff, right?”

He shrugs again; shoulders hunching, his chest collapsing into itself. He looks to the left of her.

“I guess,” he tells her.

She looks to the left of herself. Nothing is there.

“You gonna dance with me, Teavee?” 

She’s smirking. She’s making fun of him. He should throw something at her. Hack her Wikipedia page.

“‘Cause I think you gotta,” she continues. “It’s, like, the rules.”

“I don’t do ‘rules’,” he says defiantly, shoving out his chin and his scrawny chest.

Her eyes sparkle like her track suit.

Mike Teavee is not a good dancer, but Violet Beauregarde doesn’t say a word about it.


	6. Prompt: Decent lives (future fic)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "An AU where the Wonka kids aren't completely messed up from the tour and go on to live decent and somewhat fulfilling lives."

He can feel someone’s eyes on him. The man seated next to him is giving him a very long look. And this isn’t really that kind of bar.

“Didn’t you used to be Mike Teavee?” The man asks, shaking his finger like someone has tried and failed to pull a fast one on him.

It’s going to be one of those conversations.

Mike Teavee turns on his stool and gives the man a close-lipped but not unfriendly smile.

“I like to think I still am,” the twenty-seven year old says.

The man laughs, like they always do, and it only grates a little.

“Man, that Wonka contest,” the man says, shaking his head, and Mike lets him go on, because that’s all people really want, and it’s not like he doesn’t have the time. “I spent an entire month’s allowance on Wonka bars. Can you imagine doing something like that now?”

“Not really,” Mike replies, chuckling politely, even though he never spent a single penny in the first place.

“Still,” the man says, pointing at him again. “You got to see inside. You lived the dream.” 

“I definitely lived it,” Mike agrees. “It was a trip.”

“Lucky sonuvagun,” the man says. “Oh, and hey, my little nephew? He loves your games.”

By which, Mike has learned over the years, the man means: he has no nephew and is speaking of himself, but is too embarrassed to admit he still games in his thirties.

“Lemme buy you drink,” the man offers.

Mike waves him off.

“Thanks, I don’t drink,” he says. And then, because he can feel the question of why he is in a bar at all start to form in the man’s mind. “I’m here meeting some friends. But: it’s always great to hear people are enjoying my stuff. I gotta go; nice meeting you though.”

He gives the man a firm but distinctly final handshake, and moves toward a back corner where he has spotted her lurking.

“I think you did not even roll your eyes at this one,” she says, her Russian accent slightly more muted than it was at twelve. “I am impressed.”

“Prozac,” Mike insists.

Veruca laughs, and it doesn’t grate at all. The slender young woman is wrapped in a scarf he thinks might be longer than she is tall, a slouchy sweater, leggings, and well-worn over-sized boots. This seems to be one of the default uniforms of all off-duty ballerinas (and some models). Her blond hair is pulled up into a tidy bun. His own hair, by comparison, is a spiked quiff that is a mess by design.

“It’s good to see you,” he tells her.

“Hug me, you idiot,” she demands flatly.

He does. When he pulls back, a meaty hand lands on his shoulder. He turns to face its owner.

Augustus Gloop looms over him. Augustus Gloop looms over almost everyone. A growth spurt at fifteen that Mike cannot help but envy eventually left the German six feet and six inches tall. It thinned him out somewhat as well, and although he will never not be big-boned, Gloop is no longer as wide as he is high. He retains soft edges, a rounded stomach, a slightly ruddy complexion, and a warm friendly face.

“Hallo Michael.”

Like Mike, Augustus has long since lost his high pitched prepubescent voice, but he has retained more of his German accent than Veruca has. He has also retained his blond hair, but it no longer looks like it was placed under a bowl to be cut. In a flannel shirt and hoodie that his mother did not knit for once, Gloop looks pretty cool.

Mike lets the German envelop him in a nearly rib crushing bear hug that momentarily lifts him off his feet. Once released, he goes immediately for Gus’ messenger bag, crouching down, because Gus wears the bag low on his hip, and running a hand over the soft leather.

“This is one of yours, right?” Mike asks.

The German nods.

“Goat leather. Mother had gotten more orders for them, so she had sent me more hides.”

Sewing, apparently, runs in Gloops’ blood as much as sausages do.

“I have made a batch,” Augustus continues, “and that same shop downtown will take them. But also there is a crafting fair that maybe I will go to if I have the days off at the restaurant to-…”

“Shut up and take my money,” Mike says.

Augustus laughs.

“Michael, you know I never charge you. In black, you will want it?” Gus guesses correctly, because Mike remains somewhat predictable about certain things, and Mike is already imagining studding the strap of such a glorious beast as Gloop embraces Veruca somewhat more gently.

“Do we wait for her?” the blond woman asks, more or less rhetorically.

Mike shakes his head.

“We all know she’s gonna be late,” he says.

They head through a door and down a flight of stairs few people know about. A girl at the bottom recognizes Gus from restaurant circles and ushers them into an intimate space where they take a seat in a comfortable booth with privacy curtains. Gus is only still a rising star on the chef’s circuit, but it’s funny how small New York actually is.

It’s funny, how they all ended up in New York, at least, for the time being.

(It’s funny that they are here at all.)

Well. Not that funny. Each of them walked out of Wonka’s factory exactly as they walked in. It was their parents who were altered (although also: not physically). 

No magic spells, no potions: just as the Candy Man promised, but one thing Wonka certainly was, was an illusionist. And he had seen immediately who needed to be shown the error of their ways, and few things are as motivating to a parent as the idea of their child in peril.

“I was barely in the chocolate,” Augustus had been the first to explain, the first time they all reunited. “I fell through a bottom. I was not in a pipe at all. It was, I think, a doll to look like me. The falling in was still startling.”

“Yeah, the bloating was not fun,” Violet had said. “But those Oompa guys gave me some antacid and it went away. I got no idea what my dad thought was me that exploded, or what he medically thinks is inside of people, but, uh, thanks for groovin’ on a bop while y’all thought I was dying.”

“Also doll,” Veruca had told them. “How could I call for my pappa with my head removed?“

“…V.R.,” Mike had reluctantly admitted. “I thought I seriously got shrunk and teleported inside the internet, but then it went black and I was just down a trap door with a V.R. headset on. I was kinda bummed, honestly. But on the plus side: I did get a eight inch remote control replica of myself. That was pretty awesome.”

And they had all watched as their parents had reacted to their apparent untimely demises. Had realized the peril their parenting (or lack their of) had placed their children in.

(It had taken Mike slightly longer to realize that his mother had not really been happy about the idea of him being shrunk; that the idea of seeing something like that done to her son and not being able to do anything about it had actually driven his mother temporarily insane, which is probably the strongest and most negative reaction it is possible to have. But he had gotten there.)

After the factory, things had been…different. 

None of them had been punished (because none of them had been truly to blame), but all of their parents had certainly changed their tunes.

And somehow it hadn’t been so difficult to get used to after all.

They sit around a table now, well adjusted young men and women. Or: woman, at the moment.

Augustus Gloop has been making a steady name for himself as a gourmet chef. He is working under a celebrity at the moment, producing the epic tasting menu’s the Swiss establishment is known for, but he has headed his own pop-up’s and food carts to great success and reviews.

Veruca Salt is currently a soloist at ABT, after training and dancing at the Bolshoi and the Vaganova. They have all seen her perform: she is generous with her comp tickets. She is also undeniably talented. There have been rumors circling that she may be promoted to principal next season.

Mike Teavee designs video games. Because of course he does. Immensely popular games that require strategy, and critical thinking as much as hand-eye coordination. Some of them have won awards for serving educational purposes. These games, along with several well-received apps have left him unexpectedly wealthy. His first apartment is in San Francisco, but he likes the vibe and the weather in New York so much so that he has a residence in the city as well. 

And Violet Beauregard is always late.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” She says, breathlessly, as she joins them. “A thing. But you all know. I don’t even gotta tell you.” 

Violet is a celebrity hair and make-up artist. She made her name on YouTube, but she’s as legitimately trained as Veruca and Augustus are. She’s in high demand from both companies and clients.

She frowns at Mike’s hair.

“What happened to the blue?” She pouts.

Mike runs his hand carefully over his ‘do. 

“It faded really fast and I didn’t wanna rebleach,” he explains. “It’s fine.”

“I know you’re punk rock as all hell, but seriously: let me do it,” Violet insists. “I will do it in yo’ bathroom sink for the sake of your authenticity if I gotta.”

He eventually agrees.

“Your mothers are having the good time,” Veruca says, with a smirk.

Both Mike and Augustus freeze, because it is their mothers she is talking about. Mrs. Teavee and Mrs. Gloop have long since struck up an unexpected single lady friendship and enjoy taking vacations together. They are currently on an Italian river cruise making the most of Italy, Italian food, and Italian men in a photograph that is burned in both Mike and Gus’ mind that neither of them are sure they were meant to receive and both are afraid to ask about.

“Yes,” Augustus says, smiling a little more rigidly than usual. “…jah.” 

“Did she drop a new post on Instagram?” Violet asks Veruca.

“I will never get over the fact that you follow my mom on Instagram,” Mike says.

In her retirement, Ethel has joined Instagram. Instagram is very about her retro aesthetic. She has been interviewed for ‘Racked’.

“She is crushing it,” Violet tells him. “Did you teach her hashtags?”

He maybe guided her in her hashtagging.

“Annnnnnyway,” Mike says, changing the subject and turning towards Veruca. “How’s what’s-his-face?”

“We do not speak his name,” Veruca hisses. “Ballerinos! все мужчины сосать. All men!”

She looks pointedly at Gus and Mike, who know better than to argue with her.

“Yeah, speaking of,” Violet says. “No more 3am Teavee specials?”

“What is this?” Gus asks.

“I kept getting these late night texts from him, and I’m all jazzed because I think Teavee’s got some serious tea for me that can NOT wait and instead I get bull. What was the last one?” Violet asks, while scrolling through her phone. She stops and reads:

“‘Treasures in disguise as monsters’. What in the Dungeons and Dragons is that supposed to mean?”

Mike has buried his face in his hands, but he’s laughing behind them.

“It was the Ambien again, I swear,” he swears. “I got off it. At least I didn’t buy any more non-refundable plane tickets to Shanghai.”

“That was fun, though,” Augustus points out.

“Yeah, it was,” Mike admits.

Off of Paxil, it turns out Mike likes to eat. Like, a lot. And still has the metabolism to mostly deal with it. Gus had been very willing to join him on a tasting trip through Shanghai, lest the tickets go to waste. The trip had left both with fond memories of Ci Fan Tuan, and You Dunzi, as well as up a pants size, but that’s what vacations in your twenties are for.

Gus, Violet, and Veruca order and then sip cocktails. Mike sticks to ginger ale and truffle fries. He has never had a problem with alcohol, because he has never let himself have one, and he knows himself (and his family history) well enough to know that he too easily could. 

Things are too good to wreck like that, you know?

He checks his phone.

“Hey, it’s time,” he says.

The others put their drinks aside, and Mike…unfolds his phone. The palm sized device becomes twice its size, then three, until it is a twenty-inch tablet with an extendable stand that Mike places in the middle of the table, and then taps on.

An app connects. A screen pops up. A hand reaches through the screen. They all help Charlie Bucket until he is sitting in the booth with them.

Bucket is thin, for a chocolatier. He is only a little taller than Mike, who is short. He has the same boyish grin he had back when he and his family had nothing.

Mike refolds his device, until it looks like just a phone again. He spends the rest of the evening wedged comfortably between Gus and Violet. Plans are vaguely made for another trip like Shanghai, and more concretely for a sort of pub crawl that consists of, instead of drinking, eating dollar slices of pizza until they have located the best one. Veruca refuses to take part, but will still come along. Charlie cannot make it: he has a factory to run, but they promise to send him a winning slice.

It’s just one of many good days in a more than decent life.


	7. Prompt: Sky High AU (Mike/Veruca)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "This may be a little too obscure but have you thought of an AU where Mike and the rest of the tour crew go to Sky High and are sorted into sidekicks (Hero Support)."

He shouldn’t even be here. Not here, in this room, with these other freaks and losers. Not here, in this school, at all.

Ethel Teavee (in Mike Teavee’s always correct opinion) has the dumbest super-power ever. It’s a sort of location telepathy: she can tell you where someone is, anywhere in the world, at any time. But she has to have met the person, which means she’s totally useless as any kind of super spy or cop, and is instead just the world’s most annoying geography teacher at a high school for super powered teenagers. And most smothering mother, of course, not that she has ever had to wonder where Mike might be. Mike is always in front of his computer. Or was.

Mike has always known he would have some kind of technopathy. He doesn’t know what his dad had, or could do: Ethel doesn’t talk about him, and Mike can’t remember him, but he wants to think his power was cool. That he’s some big-time hero with some big-time secret identity and that’s why Ethel has to keep it hush-hush.

But Mike has always known he would have some kind of technopathy. Electronics, computers, video-games…they have always come easy to him. He has always been able to do anything he wanted with them, better than adults, better than anybody. 

“Getting your powers isn’t always easy,” his mother had always warned him, but Mike had always thought it would be, for him. Would be like a natural progression of what he could already do.

And then his fingers had begun to stretch.

He had been tapping away as usual at his keyboard, and he had gone to shift his wrist to reach a key and found: he didn’t have to. Which was…weird. Mike had always been on the short side. His hands, though nimble, had always been small.

And then everything had gone wrong.

He spent two weeks in his room as parts of him stretched, independently from each other and completely beyond his control. One leg: seemingly miles longer than the other and unable to hold his weight. One arm: so long his knuckles touched the floor. His neck one day: unable to lift his head off of his pillow as it coiled above his shoulders like a snake.

His mother had probably tried to comfort him. Mike can only remember crying. It had hurt.

He’s 7′6 now. He can stretch himself taller and longer than that, but he can’t make himself any shorter than 7′6. It’s not a natural 7′6 either (if there even is such a thing). His limbs are symmetrical, but too long; too thin. His face is…wrong. He looks like someone stuck him in a taffy puller. He has to special order his clothes and shoes.

And everything is pointless now. He can’t have a secret identity like this. His mom is convinced his powers are still settling: that he’ll eventually shrink back down to a manageable height, but what does she know about it? Nothing, that’s what.

Of course all the dumb jock sports teams came knocking, even the one at this freak school, but joke’s on them: Mike can barely jog without tripping over his stretched out feet.

He shouldn’t be here. He should be at home. He should be at home, in front of his computer. 

He should be at home in front of his computer but when he tries to type too fast now, his fingers tangle themselves into knots.

It’s still better than hunching and slinking his way through a sea of normal sized teenagers who can do stuff like: fly, and: turn invisible.

What Mike wouldn’t give to be invisible. He’s super, super visible.

Even in the back row of stupid ‘hero support’ (side-kick classes), where he sits behind a table because he can’t cram himself into a desk. The boy who always sits beside him can’t either, but not because of his height: Augustus Gloop is almost spherical. He is almost spherical because he can eat anything. Mike has seen him eat a brick. It’s cool, but pointless. Gloop’s okay, though: like a gentle giant.

Mike is not gentle. 

Physically he’s…well a sort of long skinny mess, but his tongue is sharp. That never tangles. It gets him both into and out of trouble.

Ethel makes him trip and slink to school the same time she does: earlier than the rest of the students. She doesn’t escort him to his classes, at least: she doesn’t have to. She always knows where he is. He doesn’t totally mind having the extra minutes of peace to sort out his own limbs and try to get comfortable before Gloop and the rest of the world shows up. His knees still fight him sometimes.

It’s not enough, though. His mom may know where he is at all times, but that doesn’t mean she can shut him up, and the result is: a near constant stay in detention.

Usually it’s just him, and Mr. Wonka (who Mike is sure hates him more than any other teacher there is or has ever been).

Today is different. Today there is a girl.

Mike doesn’t know her, but Mike doesn’t really know anybody. Mike does know she’s not a sidekick.

Mike also has eyes and can see that she’s…dressed like a ballerina. Those shoes and skirts they wear and everything. Mike’s no ballerina, but he’s pretty sure wearing those shoes just walking around wrecks them. There is also a crown perched on top of her head, nestled in her blonde curls.

She looks completely insane.

Wonka has left them alone to deal with some sort of accident in the gym. Mike stares at the back of Princess Tutu’s (as he has decided to call her) head and wonders what she did to end up here. She probably didn’t hack Krystal Ballz’s facebook page too, but: who knows.

The blonde girl turns slowly in her seat. She is petite enough to fit comfortably into a normal desk, and she turns with the sort of grace Mike does not think he ever possessed and certainly does not now. She looks him up and down (and up, and up). Mike tries and fails to shrink deeper into his hoodie.

“What,” she asks (and she pronounces it like ‘vhat’, because she has a significant Russian accent), “are you supposed to be, some kind of super-noodle?”

He glares at her.

“No,” he mutters. “What are you supposed to be, s-…”

And he has a beautiful biting insult on the tip of his tongue, but she cuts him off.

“Veruca,” she says, as if that should mean anything.

“What’s a Veruca?” He asks, as if he doesn’t care, which he mostly doesn’t.

Her eyes darken.

“VER-u-CA,” she repeats, practically seething. And then (shoving her well-sculpted nose into the air and everything). “Greatest super-heroine and heir to peanut and other fortunes.”

She tosses her long blonde locks.

Mike stares at her flatly.

“Never heard of you,” he says. 

(He hasn’t, although he would have said the same thing regardless because she seems like the kind of person who would be bothered by that sort of thing.)

(She is.)

Her eyes darken.

“Go get me Dr. Pepper,” she says, beginning to turn back around in her seat.

Mike doesn’t move (obviously.)

“Uh, how about: no?” He says.

She turns back towards him. Her own eyes narrow.

“Get me Dr. Pepper, now,” she says, more forcefully.

“Just because I’m a side-kick doesn’t make you the boss of me,” he argues.

Her eyes dart towards the door.

“Go to door,” she says, sounding less sure of herself.

“Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnno,” he says. “N. O. No. Whatever you want, whatever you need, whatever you say: no.”

He was totally right: she’s totally nuts.

She stares at him. Her mouth hangs open.

“…nobody says no to Veruca Salt,” she says.

That’s her power, he realizes. That’s her power, and for some reason it doesn’t work on him.

He sits back in his chair as much as he is able to (which isn’t much) and folds his long freakish arms across his chest.

“I’m not nobody,” he says, smirking at her surprise. And then jerks his head back as she practically climbs onto his desk.

She kneels on her seat, elbows on his desk, chin in her hands. Her toes point and kick at the air behind her head.

“What is your name, Noodle?” she purrs. 

“Why should I tell you?” He asks, cockily.

She claps in delight. He wonders if nobody really does ever say no to her. Maybe it gets old, but he honestly can’t relate.

“Mike Teavee,” he tells her. She doesn’t seem disappointed, he supposes, because he has told her on his own.

“What do you dooooooooo?” She continues to purr.

His smirk fades.

“You’re looking at it,” he mutters.

She’s looking at him. He doesn’t like it.

She’s upside-down, suddenly. He’s not sure how. She’s executed some move and he’s looking at her pink-clad calves and feet. The rest of her hangs underneath her chair. He tries to inch his own feet back. There’s no room.

Her hands grab at his skinny ankles. He yelps. She yanks. She pulls his feet until they are almost under her desk, where her feet would be, if she wasn’t doing gymnastics.

“This is better,” she says, having arranged him so his knees are no longer pressed against the underside of his table.

She’s right: it is more comfortable.

She’s still upside down.

“…I am the stuck,” she admits.

He reaches out (easily), and pulls her left leg.

Her left leg comes off in his hand. 

He yelps again and drops the detached limb. She does a one-legged sideways cartwheel, grabs her own leg, and pops it back into place with practiced ease.

He’s staring at her. She doesn’t seem to mind.

“It’s, uh, supposed to do that?” He asks.

“I also can fly,” she tells him, crossing her ankles over her desk and laying back across his table with a grin.

He shoves his hands into the pockets of his hoodie.

“I stretch,” he admits.

“More than this?” She asks. She seems…impressed. He shrugs.

“Sure,” he tells her. Even if he doesn’t like to. Just in case. He could get stuck even…taller.

She does another of her moves. She’s sitting on her desk now. It makes them almost the same height.

“And what else?”

‘Nothing,’ he’s about to say.

“Computers,” he says, instead.

She cocks her head.

“A power?” She asks.

He shakes his head; tries not to look as disappointed as he always feels when he thinks about it. He shouldn’t have even said anything, maybe. His fingers…

“You are smart,” she says. Something behind her eyes looks…he isn’t sure. Predatory? “If you are so smart, why are you here?”

He snorts.

“Because Krystal Ballz-…”

Veruca hisses like a cat.

“…thinks she’s pretty funny. So I made some of her private jokes public. So, you know, everybody could laugh at what she says about them.”

She is grinning.

“This was you.”

It’s not a question. 

“You are funny,” she tells him.

He sits just a tiny bit taller.

“So why are you here?” He asks her.

She sighs.

“I do not like the sidekick I am assigned,” she says. “He makes lewd jokes. He is not funny. So I take my arm-…”

She removes one of her arms at the shoulder.

“…and I slap him.”

She slaps lightly at the arm between them with her detached arm. 

“Apparently this is frowned upon in your country,” she says, rolling her eyes.

His mouth twitches. He almost laughs. Maybe more than almost.

A bell rings. They both glance at the clock. The detention period is over. They are free to go.

She dismounts her desk. He starts to gather his legs. She’s standing beside him before he has a handle on them. She comes up to about his chin when he is sitting.

“I will tell them to assign you to me,” she says.

He opens his mouth, only for her to press a finger against it, silencing him.

“Nobody says no to Veruca Salt,” she reminds him. She rises up onto the very tips of her toes like the dancer she is, and presses her lips against his cheek. She pirouettes around while he’s still reeling. She literally flies out of the door, arms outstretched like Superman, if Superman had a pink handbag slung casually over his shoulder.

Mike sits in stunned silence. Ethel appears a moment later, looking slightly frazzled.

“That girl needs to look where she’s flying,” his mother complains. She frowns at something on Mike’s face.

“Did she make you do something?” She asks.

Mike shakes his head and gets to his feet. Slinks past his mother. Almost hits his head on the door frame. Doesn’t. 

“Michael?” His mother prompts.

Mike rolls his eyes.

“Laugh, mom,” he says. “She made me laugh.”


	8. Prompt: Featuring Mike's Dad (and Mike and Doris and Ethel and West End!Mike)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "What about a fic featuring Mike's dad?"

The little brat has kicked him under the table. Mike is both sure it was intentional and surprised that It could reach.

This is going to be the worst Thanksgiving ever.

It’s been a while since Thanksgiving was more than just him and Ethel and (best case scenario) KFC, or (worst case scenario) something turkey adjacent Ethel has tried and failed to cook. Mike’s behavioral problems have made him and his mother unwelcome at most family gatherings, and as far as Mike Teavee is concerned, that’s just fine.

He doesn’t know whose dumb idea this was, and he doesn’t care. He just wants this nightmare to be over with.

He kicks back.

“Ouch!” Norman Teavee yelps, bending down to clutch his shin.

Ethel Teavee turns sharply toward her son.

“Michael, did you just kick your father?” She asks.

“No,” Mike says, sullenly. Because Norman Teavee is not his father. Not anymore.

“No,” the nine-year old boy sitting across from Mike insists, crossly. Because his name is also Michael. Michael Teavee. And the fact that Norman Teavee thought that was a good idea says everything about the man Mike feels he needs to know. He is not interested in one single factoid more about his supposed father.

He already knows everything there is to know about his half-brother too. He remembers being nine clearly. 

Neither he, nor...It (as Mike mentally refers to his half-brother, out of a lack of desire to surrender his own name) look like Norman. But they do look like brothers. The other boy’s skin isn’t quite as pale, and his hair is shorter and slightly less gravity defying, but it’s dark and spiky like Mike’s is. The other boy is short and skinny, like Mike is too. He could, in fact (in Mike’s opinion), stand to be shorter (or at least: a lot shorter than Mike, which he isn’t). He could also not exist at all. That would be best.

His dark brows slant down over his eyes, and he has a constant nasty expression that is admittedly familiar. He is stepping on Mike’s style hard, in baggy black pants, Chuck Taylors, and a red t-shirt with a flaming skull on it. He has yet to adopt finger-less gloves and snapbacks as a fashion statement. Mike gives that about a year.

Norman Teavee is tall-ish, with mousy brown hair, no personal style to speak of, and utterly forgettable facial features. His yelp at having been kicked is the most he has reacted to anything so far. He had not reacted when his wife had dropped a glass at the sight of Mike. He had not reacted when his son (his actual, current, nine year old son) had kicked the coffee table over (a total amateur's move). He had not even blinked at Mike and the height which (at thirteen) he should but does not have. Mike had not looked up from his phone, but he had been watching the man carefully out of the corner of his eye.

“She wasn’t talking to you, doofus!” Mike spits at his miniature semi-doppelganger. The other boy’s tone is particularly enraging. Nobody talks to Ethel like that but Mike.

“She said my name, stupid!” It spits back.

“What if we all played a game!” Doris Teavee suggests, too loudly and too cheerfully.

Doris Teavee is Norman’s wife; Ethel’s replacement. She is a younger model, with dark hair (although Ethel’s natural hair color is also dark, closer to Mike’s than she will probably ever admit). Her fit-and-flare floral dress is less eye-searing than Ethel general prefers, but she’s certainly just as retro. Ethel is either not bothered by her, or has self-medicated herself into a coma. Doris seems even closer to snapping than Ethel, her smile tight and wild-eyed. She seems to be vibrating at all times. Mike wants to offer her a Klonopin, but that would require acknowledging her existence.

They all turn and look at her (except for Norman) like she has lost it completely. They have all just sat down to eat. You don’t play games while you’re eating.

(...well, both of the Mikes have been known to, but not the sort of games Doris means.) 

“I just...I just thought,” Doris says, before trailing off into her drink.

“You never think anything, you’re totally useless!” It tells his mother, intentionally knocking his glass over into her lap. Doris leaps to her feet and tries in vain to brush the cranberry juice off the skirt of her dress. Something in Mike’s ears burns.

“SHUT YOUR MOUTH YOU LITTLE JERK, THAT’S YOUR MOM!” He hollers, standing and slamming his palms on the table. Water (and other) glasses rattle.

Nine year old Mike Teavee pushes himself back from the table despite himself. His chair rocks, then tips, then sends him falling backwards, finally hitting the floor with a heavy thud. Everyone is very quiet, and very still.

The younger boy begins to wail. Doris and Ethel rush to his side. From where he is standing, Mike can see the boy’s arm is twisted at an unnatural angle. Definitely broken. The two women fawn over the boy. He bats Doris away.

“...what?” Norman Teavee says.

No one notices as Mike slips away, into the kitchen.

The Teavee’s kitchen in Colorado is achingly similar to the Teavee’s kitchen in Idaho. Mike feels like he could say what cabinet which dishes are in, and what is in the fridge without opening anything. He grips the cool stainless steel edge of the sink. He can still hear the other boy crying, but it is quieter, and then it gets further away, and then a door opens and closes, and then it stops.

He can hear footsteps even though this house is as wall-to-wall carpeted as his own. But it is not Ethel who collects him.

Norman Teavee clears his throat.

“There you are.”

Here Mike is. He turns away from the sink to face his father.

“Your, uh, mother. Went in the cab. To the hospital with them. But you and I would probably just be in the way,” Norman says, not quite looking Mike in the eye.

In the way. Yeah. That sounds accurate. Mike glares at the man.

“I didn’t do it,” he mutters.

“...what?” Norman says, sounding completely baffled.

“I didn’t push him or anything!” Mike insists. Because he’s no stranger to being punished, but he does what he gets punished for. He’s not going down for a faulty chair or a nine year old’s lack of spatial awareness.

“...oh,” Norman says. “...no. It was...no.”

He stands there, looking awkward. After a moment he moves to sit at the kitchen table, but he looks no less awkward. He also does not indicate in any way that he wants Mike to join him, even though that’s what it feels like he should do, so Mike just stands and stares at him some more.

“I thought,” Norman suddenly chuckles, “when your mother said you were thirteen now, that you would be...taller.”

Mike stiffens. His fists clench.

“I was,” he mutters, darkly, through clenched teeth.

“...what?” Norman says.

“Nevermind,” Mike tells him, sullenly. He stomps over to the table and sits in the chair farthest from his father, even though the man has not deigned to invite him. He folds his arms and stares at the table top. Somewhere, in Ethel’s purse, is his phone.

“I...uh...I suppose...we’ve never talked,” Norman says.

Mike raises his gaze slowly and wonders whose fault that is supposed to be. This is the most he has ever heard the man say, and it’s still very little, and even that small amount has brought him to conclude: Norman Teavee is terrible at talking. The man probably could not communicate with another human if his life depended on it.

“I don’t like talking,” Mike says.

That’s not really true: Mike likes talking. Other people don’t like when Mike talks.

Nevertheless, silence hangs between them. A clock ticks, somewhere.

“It was her father’s name,” Norman suddenly blurts.

“...huh?” Mike says.

“Doris,” Norman continues. “It was her father’s name, and she wanted... I don’t know where your mother got it from. I always liked the name ‘Henry’.”

Mike sits back hard in his chair. But not enough to fall over backwards and break anything.

“Do I look like a Henry to you?” He asks.

Norman looks him over thoughtfully. Looks up at the ceiling thoughtfully. Seems to be trying to picture what a Henry looks like.

“I...guess not,” the man decides.

Mike shoves his hands into the pockets of his black hoodie.

“Your mother and I,” Norman begins.

“No,” Mike says.

“We...two people, you know?” the man continues.

“I don’t wanna hear it,” Mike says.

“They grow apart,” Norman braves on.

“I don’t wanna hear it!” Mike insists.

“But we did, then, we loved each other very much.”

“Dad, gross!” Mike exclaims. Then stiffens. He hadn’t meant to. It had just: slipped out of his dumb traitorous mouth.

Norman notices. Norman says nothing. Then Norman says:

“You can. If you want.”

“I don’t want,” Mike practically growls. “You’re not my dad!”

Norman doesn’t argue.

“I guess I haven’t been,” he agrees. “...I didn’t mean to do that.”

“You shoulda kept doing it,” Mike snaps. “You shouldn’ta dragged us here.”

“...what?” Norman says. And Mike understands why nine year old Mike kicks over coffee tables.

“...your mother called me,” Norman says. “It was...she thought you...that it would...help.”

Mike sits, stunned. This is how he looks: blank-faced and slack-jawed. This is how he feels: like someone has injected molten lava into the base of his spine, and it is flowing upward through his veins toward his head where it will explode. She has betrayed him.

Also:

“You didn’t even wanna see...us.”

Mike’s voice is flat. He almost says ‘me’, but that would be giving too much away.

“It’s...complicated,” Norman explains, lamely. 

It’s not that complicated. Mike stares across a table that seems to be growing wider by the minute, at his father. There have always been a million things he wanted to ask; to say to the man.

‘What did I do, that was so bad it broke you and mom up?’

‘When did you know you didn’t want me?’

‘Why wasn’t I good enough?’

Norman Teavee, he knows now, would not have an answer to any of his questions.

“Figure it out,” Mike says, instead. “Figure it all out. You’re messing up your kid, you know?”

He leaves his father alone in the kitchen. When his mother returns, she finds him sitting by himself in the living room, in front of the television set. It isn’t turned on. She sinks slowly onto the couch next to him.

“He’ll be...fine,” she says.

She means that It just has to wear a cast for a while; doesn’t need surgery or anything.

“This isn’t exactly what I had in mind,” she admits.

“Can we just go,” Mike says. It’s not a question.

“That might be a good idea,” his mother agrees. 

“No one blames you,” she adds, quickly.

He gives her a look.

“Duh,” he says. “It was never my fault.”

One days he’ll believe that completely. He’s closer now, at least, than he was yesterday.


	9. Prompt: Wisdom Teeth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "...can I request Mike T. getting his wisdom teeth out, based on the video of Mike W. getting his out on Instagram?"

Mike Teavee is not cuddly.

He never has been. Not even really as a baby, despite Ethel’s tendency to view his pre-walking, talking, and texting years through rosy tinted nostalgic glasses. He had (in Ethel’s biased opinion) been adorable, of course: thick dark hair and huge blue eyes, but he spent a lot more time crying and drooling than cooing sweetly at her than she likes to admit.

A little like how he is drooling now, ironically. Of course now there’s more blood.

She presses a towel wrapped around a package of frozen peas to her son’s mouth. His head is propped up by pillows, but he’s still mostly out of it. Tears still cling to his long dark lashes.

She secretly enjoys these moments, just a little bit. Not his pain, of course. But under normal circumstances he wouldn’t allow her to hover so close. He would be annoyed if she tried to brush the hair off of his forehead. She can look at his face for as long as she likes when he’s like this, without him twisting it up in disgust. At least: until the drugs wear off.

Michael has to be sedated for every dental visit. Even for something as simple as a cleaning. That’s been the deal ever since he punched one of the dentists out for ‘lying’ (“He said it wasn’t gonna hurt and it hurt”). Even at 14 they have to dope him up, knock him out, and strap him down. It’s far from the only place where certain precautions are taken due to her son being…her son. But the dentist’s is the only one that leaves her with such a pliable little boy; one who answers to 'Mikey’, and doesn’t remember that he did so later, and as such doesn’t punish her in any way for upsetting his 'street cred’ (or whatever the kids today call it). And Mike does need a lot of dental work. He isn’t very diligent about brushing and he grinds his teeth like a horse, even on an SSRI.

But nothing about Mike comes completely without complications. She keeps one eye on her son. She keeps the other on his phone.

She isn’t sure how (particularly because of his temporary loss of fine motor skills), but in the time between when he first comes to, and they allow her to collect him, he always manages to text or tweet at or FaceTime someone. She has, over the years, ended up apologizing on his behalf to a wide variety of people. From local businesses to the presidents of small nations. She’s never able to explain how he manages to get their numbers: he just does. That’s just Mike.

Today is unlikely to be an exception. Today has not been a simple cleaning. 

There is always the chance she will be fielding a complaint from Jerry Jubilee’s publicist shortly, but lately (at least, since regaining his height after visiting Wonka’s factory), Mike tends to limit his drugged contacts to a smaller and more familiar circle.

Some time last year he sent a long rambling missive to Mrs. Gloop (specifically Mrs. Gloop, not her son) full of half hysterical sobbing about jello molds (Ethel has no idea what that’s about, her casseroles are just fine), and wildly complimenting her ability to knit. Michael has no idea why he suddenly began receiving regular care packages full of sweaters and scarves from Germany, and Ethel isn’t about to tell him because oddly enough: he actually wears them. Mrs. Gloop knows a boy’s color palate when she sees it, and all of her offerings are acceptably black on black, with maybe a touch of neon. Ethel had not been previously aware that one could knit an iPad cover, but Mike is particularly pleased with that creation. Although Ethel privately suspects the device never really has the chance to get cold.

Slightly more recently, well…she had rather liked it when Oleg Salt had rung up, even though he had insisted on calling her 'Mrs. Television’. Ethel has and has had her hands too full with Mike to even think about re-entering the dating scene, but she’s not dead: the Russian oligarch is a looker. She’s still not exactly sure what Mike might have said to him or his daughter, but she wouldn’t entirely mind if Mr. Salt had to call again. A lady can have her dreams on those cold Idaho nights. 

Whoever Mike has bothered this time is taking their time saying anything about it. There’s probably some way of finding out who they are, but she couldn’t possibly. His little computer phone intimidates her: it has no buttons. Best to just sit and wait and enjoy her son’s heavily drugged company and hope whoever she ends up having to speak to speaks English.

Mike’s head has lolled onto her shoulder, and Ethel is feeling particularly maternal, despite the fact that Mike has definitely already ruined her blouse, when his phone buzzes to life.

“Phooooooooone,” he mumbles into her neck.

“Oh. I…right,” Ethel says, to the phone mostly. “I just…”

She manages to retrieve the device without sending him tumbling to the floor, and then to wrangle one of his limp hands into activating the device, by placing his thumb over the little circle at the bottom herself. The phone is…alive now, but she has missed the call. She did see that the number was labelled something: Old Man. Her heart screeches to a stop for a second, like a needle across a record, but it couldn’t possibly be: Mike does not speak to his father. He would never have the man’s number saved in his phone, would he?

The device begins to vibrate in her hand again.

“Phone,” Mike mumbles.

“…Hello?” Ethel says, dubiously.

“Hello Mrs. T., I have some concerns,” the voice on the other end of the line (although Ethel supposes they don’t really use lines anymore) says.

She doesn’t know how he knows so quickly that it is her: this is Michael’s phone. Most people are at least a little confused when she answers it (which she does rarely, because when alert Michael does not allow her to touch his phone). It seems unlikely that he might have recognized her voice, although she recognizes his instantly. As if she could forget it.

“Mr. Wonka,” Ethel begins. “…whatever Michael did, I’m so sorry, but it really wasn’t his fault this time.” 

“He’s sent me twenty-seven video messages, and I don’t mean to alarm you, but I suspect he may have gotten into some of your, uh, ‘lemonade’,” Wonka tells her.

“Oh, no,” Ethel protests. “I would never let him do that.”

Wouldn’t she? No, she wouldn’t. Not that Ethel isn’t a cool mom, but she needs that ‘lemonade’ for herself. 

“Tell ‘im he’s old,” Mike tells her hair. “S’important an’ he needs to know.”

“He’s had his wisdom teeth out,” Ethel says, hoping Wonka cannot hear what Michael is saying.

“…oh,” Wonka replies. 

The man sounds strangely small on the other end of the phone. Ethel supposes chocolatiers and dentists may be some sort of natural enemies, but she’s not sure that quite accounts for how he sounds.

“Mo-om,” Michael is saying in her ear, over and over. She can feel drool dripping down her back. At least, she hopes it is just drool.

“Also tell him he’s my friend.”

Michael is crying softly now, which is just sort of how coming off of meds like these goes. She knows better than to think it means anything.

“Heeeeeee’s my friend and it’s too late he just is,” Mike sobs.

She would place her hand over the receiver if this was any sort of normal phone, but Mike’s little black box doesn’t have one that she can find.

“It’s just the medication,” Ethel continues, apologetically over her son’s sobs. “They make him…like this, and he won’t remember it tomorrow, and I’m sure he’d appreciate if you didn’t say anything about it.”

There’s a thoughtful moment of silence from Wonka.

“My lips are sealed,” he finally says, which Ethel considers surprisingly mature of him, until the chocolatier goes on to say:

“I’ll just save these somewhere for future blackmail.”

Ethel rolls her eyes, but that does sound more like the Wonka she knows. Not that she knows him. Not, apparently, like Michael knows him.

“I should get back to him,” she says.

Mike is clinging to her waist. 

“Of course,” Wonka says. And then: “…you know what they say, though: in vino veritas. Well, good-bye.”

Ethel does know that they say that. Of course she of all people would. It’s not something she puts much stock in.

But as her son puts his head in her lap and lets her stroke his hair (something he does secretly like even when he is sober) and mumbles something that sounds very much like ‘I love you’, she cannot help but hope that Wonka has a point.


	10. Prompt: Mike/Veruca (Sky High AU part 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Could you do more Mike/Veruca?"

She glares up at him. Her head is tipped nearly all the way back. She is, Mike Teavee knows, extremely flexible. She does not seem to notice she is in a position that would put most people in traction.

“You are lying to me?” Veruca Salt half asks, half accuses. Her point shoe taps against the floor. Her slender arms are folded across her chest.

His own freakishly over-sized fingers are balled into fists.

“You know I’m not! I’m not going to the dumb thing, and nobody can make me,” he spits back, before stomping away. His long spindly legs almost tangle at the knees.

Mike Teavee can’t dance.

And he’s not saying he could before he grew to a staggering and strangely proportioned 7'6, but he probably could have faked it without making a fool of himself, if he’d wanted to. Not that he’d have wanted to.

Now though…

He has been Veruca Salt’s assigned sidekick for about two months. He had definitely thought she wasn’t going to go through with her demand to have them paired: that she was just playing around, or would forget, or would change her mind.

She hadn’t.

It has been…something.

Something volatile, sure. Veruca is used to getting what she wants, and there are clearly days when she is very over the fact that her power to make people do as she says doesn’t work on him. (Mike might just secretly enjoy having someone to yell at who isn’t Ethel, because Ethel no longer really yells back, because Ethel read some parenting book that says you shouldn’t, which is crap, because sometimes Mike just needs to yell.) She also has a very…hands-on approach to super-team work.

Mike eats his lunch alone, usually in the computer lab, because who would he wanna sit with? Nobody, that’s who. Also…sometimes his hands don’t completely cooperate and the food doesn’t exactly make it to his mouth, and nobody needs to see that.

At least, that’s how it used to be. The second day they had been assigned, Veruca had located him somehow (probably Ethel), dragged him to the cafeteria, and pushed him into a chair at a table full of superheroes.

“This is mine,” she had announced.

The heroes, with all of their traditional powers and good looks (not a freak among them) had stared at him, and he had stared flatly back, but he had wanted to sink into a 7'7 hole and die.

Mike doesn’t eat lunch anymore: just shoves down a sandwich or a bagel between classes. It’s fine. He’s never been a big eater anyway.

But he can’t deny that his grades in his physical training classes are all way, way up. Teachers look at him now like he isn’t a total write-off. His mom is…proud. They work well together. Veruca knows he’s not just a very, very tall person. She doesn’t even need a very, very tall person: she can fly. She knows to use him for his brain: that his brawn is unreliable at best, and completely klutzy at worst. And it’s…nice. It’s…kinda fun. She insists on almost always being around and, you know, he doesn’t mind. Her being being around. She doesn’t laugh at him. …She always smells nice.

But dancing is the worst.

And Mike knows because, for some reason, they had devoted a week to it in P.E. (It’s dumb enough that they have P.E. at all. They battle against physically simulated dangers and disasters: there’s no reason why they should also have to play dodge ball.) It had been a nightmare.

Mr. Shaiman had at least known better than to let them pick their own partners: he had paired them off and rotated them throughout the class.

Every girl had so obviously not wanted to dance with him. He hadn’t totally blamed them: where were they supposed to start? How were they supposed to reach? But it wasn’t as though he was drooling over the idea of clutching at all of their sweaty hands either: as if all of them were such prizes.

He had stepped on all of their feet. Every single one. Every single time. It hadn’t even been intentional: his feet are just big and far away, and it’s hard to tell where they are all the time. But he’d gotten sick of the whining and the yelping and the dirty looks, and the trying to make his legs move in patterns when it’s hard enough to just put one foot in front of the other. By that Wednesday he had conveniently ‘lost’ his gym clothes, and it’s not like he can fit in any of the extras, so he had spent three days plodding slowly around the track, trying to shake off the humiliation.

Veruca is not in his gym class, but she should have realized. She knows how legs work (or don’t, sometimes). He’s just not going to any stupid dance, and that’s that.

Except it isn’t, because Ethel makes him. 

She’s chaperoning the thing.

She’s sure he’ll have a nice time, if he just lets himself.

She’s wrong.

He sits in the bleachers, curled up as small as a 7'6 boy can curl, and stares at his phone; tries to tune out the terrible music, and the laughing teenagers, and pretend he is anywhere else. Ethel has tried, really, but the black trousers she has found for him are still a little too short above his sneakers. The button down shirt is long enough, but too big, especially around his scrawny neck. Any kind of suit jacket is thankfully out of the question, so he at least still has his hoodie.

And he ignores them all.

Except.

The crowd of super-teens shifts and parts and there she is: a petite blond in a pink dress with a poofy skirt. He has never seen her in non-ballerina clothes before. She is still wearing her crown, though.

And she’s dancing with a boy. Tyler, Mike thinks his name is. Or Taylor. Or maybe Jake. And he’s tall, but normal-tall, and broad-shouldered, and square jawed. And they fit fine together. And they are smiling, and Mike is suddenly angry; so, so angry, and he doesn’t know why. All he knows is he can’t be here, not anymore. He tries to extract himself from the bleachers without drawing anyone’s attention. He almost makes it. And then…

His toe catches on a support and he stumbles. He topples. He doesn’t fall very far (but it’s always a long way down for him), and he’s on the floor of the gym in a awkward sprawl of gangly limbs.

The music doesn’t screech to a stop, but it might as well. Everyone turns toward him. Everyone sees. Someone starts to slowly clap.

He flees.

Up on the roof, the night air is chilly, and that’s just fine. He gulps at it, trying to cool his burning face. He glances towards the fire door, but no one has followed him. Good. Maybe they’ll all just leave him alone forever.

But of course, she won’t.

He hears a tell-tale 'whoosh’ of girl-through-air, and then she appears, hovering next to the building. She lands on the roof silently; gracefully. Her arms are folded. She frowns at him.

“You say you are not coming,” she says. "And then you come. You come, but you do not dance. Why is this?“ 

He stares incredulously at her. There’s no way she missed his little trip down to floor town.

"Are you serious?” He asks. "My mom made me.“

"If I cannot make you, she cannot make you,” Veruca insists.

“She’s my mom,” Mike informs her. "Sorry to break it to you, but she can.“

Veruca looks as though she does not entirely believe that, but she presses on.

"Well you are here, then. But you do not dance.”

She cannot be this stupid. His face is starting to burn again.

“You saw what happened,” he growls.

“That was not dancing, that was falling,” she tells him, rolling her eyes.

“That’s what happens!” He yells. "It doesn’t-…! And I can’t-…! Because my stupid body-…! I can’t do anything!“

His hands claw at his chest. One of his legs kicks out. He wants to do more than that, but he’s not sure he can survive a fall from the gym rooftop. That is a long way.

"They all laughed at me. Because I’m a freak,” he mutters.

Veruca raises an eyebrow.

“They laughed because you fall,” she tells him. "They will laugh at anyone who falls. They worry also. You are so thin, they say, you could break.“

"I don’t,” he grumbles. "My bones.“

They’re weirdly rubbery.

"I know,” she says. "I tell them.“

She cocks her head to one side.

"Do you want to dance?” She asks.

“No,” He says, instinctively.

But she’s drawn close now. Very close. And she’s looking up at him.

“Do you want to dance, with me?” She asks.

The music from the dance is faint, but audible, wafting up from a few stories below. He looks down at her. He could…

He lifts his arms, then lets them fall limply to his sides.

“How?” He mumbles.

She’s so small.

He starts to try to maneuver himself onto his knees. She moves forward and up instead, taking to the air again, grasping his shirt collar and dragging him upright. She hovers in the air in front of him. She places her hands easily on his shoulders.

“Your hands on my back,” she tells him.

He places his huge spidery hands on her lower back. She’s so close. He isn’t sure where he’s supposed to look.

“It is easier, maybe, if you close your eyes,” she suggests.

The world goes dark. It is easier. It makes the music seem less distant. It makes his feet seem less distant too. It’s…nice.

The song winds down. Mike opens his eyes.

Veruca is looking at him with a strange expression on her face. And she seems…not so small in his arms suddenly. And her feet are touching the ground. 

He takes a step back; almost stumbles over the hem of his trousers that is now dragging on the ground. He pushes his sleeves back and stares down at his hands: his real hands. Hands the size a teenage boy’s hands should be. He touches his face. It feels…normal. Not like the strange, stretched out thing that stares back at him in the mirror in the morning. He looks back up at Veruca. They are almost eye to eye. He’s normal.

“You are short,” Veruca says.

There’s a rushing sound in his ears and he soars back up again. It doesn’t hurt, but there’s nothing he can do to stop it.

“No!” He wails, anyway. "No!“

He presses the heels of his once again giant spidery hands to his eyelids. His face feels long and strange under his fingers again. All 7'6 of him sinks ungracefully down to the ground and he buries his face in his sharp knees.

He will not cry in front of her. He will not.

But he wants to.

A small hand touches his back; rubs gently between his shoulder blades.

"You can just do it again,” she says.

He twists his head around.

“No I can’t!” He roars.

A small fist punches him between the shoulder blades.

“You did,” she says. "This means you can. If you want to.“

Her blues eyes are so sure; her small, doll-like face is so determined. It’s hard not to believe her.

She settles on the ground next to him; wraps her slender arms around one of his. Rests her head against it, like he’s comfortable and not pointy.

"You are not a freak,” she tells him. "I like you this way, but it does not matter. Any way you are, you are mine.“


	11. Prompt: Mike/Veruca

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A more general answer to the prompt: "Can you do more Mike/Veruca?" Why yes: yes I can.

He likes girls. That’s not the problem.

Well, it is a little bit of a problem, but an extremely embarrassing audio book his mom got him, that includes chapters such as ‘Why Am I Sweaty?’, and a general internet inquiry has assured him it’s a normal sort of problem. That even though Ethel said ‘breast’ the other night, entirely in the context of chicken, and as a result, he has felt like he might die for almost two days now, he probably won’t. At least: not of that.

What’s probably not normal is a Russian oligarch on his knees in a front hallway in Normalton, Idaho with his checkbook clasped pleadingly in both hands.

“Pleasssssssssse Mrs. Television,” Oleg Salt begs, despite the fact that they have both told him several times that their last name is not ‘Television’. “You must make him be reasonable.”

Ethel barks out a laugh, because there is no making Mike do anything. There is especially no making Mike do this.

“I will pay you whatever you wish,” Mr. Salt continues. “You do not know what she is like.”

Mike thinks he might have a pretty good idea, and also: the man is not helping himself out saying stuff like that. 

“It is all she asks for,” Mr. Salt confides. “And such a little thing-...”

Mike bristles, the corners of his mouth turning down into a frown.

“...a small request!” Oleg clarifies hurriedly. “One tiny little dinner with my Veruska. That is all! What do you say?”

The man’s eyes dart desperately from Mike to his mother. So Veruca Salt hasn’t changed much since the Wonka tour. Mike, in his opinion, hasn’t changed much either.

Well. He is shorter.

But no longer small enough to be picked up against his will and shoved in a purse, so what does he care? He doesn’t. There’s no such thing as height on the internet.

But a boy cannot live on internet alone, no matter how he tries.

And it’s been a couple years now, since Wonka’s, and you’d think (at least, Mike would have thought) that the media would have forgotten about them by now. You know: the losers. Because that’s what they are: Gloop. Teavee. Beauregarde. Salt. Golden ticket losers.

And yet the paparazzi still insist on photographing him every time he leaves the house (even as infrequent as that is). On detailing just how short he remains. On judging his fashion choices (which are lit, shut up). On speculating.

They aren’t interested in interviewing him (and he wouldn’t let them anyway), all they want to do is snap, snap, snap his picture.

Not a lot happens in Idaho, okay? He’s not sure if it’s the same for the rest of them. He’s been ignoring them as hard as he possibly can.

But it’s no mystery, at least, how Salt knows he’s still out there, not dead or anything. 

“You’ll pay anything?” Mike asks.

Ethel shoots him a look.

“Michael,” she chastises. But he can see her eyeing Mr. Salt’s checkbook too. They aren’t poor, but a teacher’s salary doesn’t go as far as it could, and Mike has expensive taste in electronics and sneakers.

They settle, eventually, on Mr. Salt making a donation to the school where Ethel teaches that will keep her and her colleagues in school supplies for at least a few years, and a ‘college fund’ for Mike, which is dumb, because he isn’t going to college, but at least when he turns eighteen he can do whatever he wants with it. 

All that, just for going on a date with a girl. Mike should (Mike thinks) go on dates with girls more often.

Of course, Mike has never actually been on a date before. Mike has never had dinner with a girl who wasn’t his mother. Mike has never been alone in a room with a girl who wasn’t his mother.

He reflects on this as he rides in Salt’s ridiculously large limousine, and then after that in the man’s private jet. Mr. Salt does not try to force conversation with them, which Mike appreciates. The man conducts business on his phone. Mike does the same on his iPad, although his business consists mainly of owning someone on reddit and playing Candy Crush. Ethel pops a Valium and has a cocktail and is out like a light. It’s pretty blissful. Plus, Oleg Salt is rich enough that they don’t have to deal with visas or whatever, and (considering some of the stuff Mike has done) that might otherwise have been an issue. 

It still takes about a day to get to Russia, and Mike does briefly entertain the idea that they are being kidnapped, but whatever. It’s not like they had anything better to do.

The Salt estate is impressive. And Mike is not a boy easily impressed. He and his mother are shown to guest rooms that are probably bigger than their entire house, and Ethel tries to convince him to change into a nice button down shirt, or ‘smart’ sweater, and fails. He shows up at the dining room in his usual baggy joggers, converse sneakers, snap back cap, and hoodie. And then it’s just him and Veruca.

The dinning table is huge, but only the very end of it has been set. The lighting is dim, but Mike can see that she is already seated at the head of the table. It feels like it takes forever, but eventually he is seated next to her, in front of way more forks than he knows what to do with.

And he has no idea what to say.

He has never not known what to say before. Words have always just come out of his mouth without having to think about them (much to a lot of people’s chagrin). This is different, for some reason.

Veruca Salt is...pretty.

And Mike Teavee is not prepared. 

He had known, even at twelve, that she was. Blond hair, blue eyes, pink dress: all stereotypically and obviously pretty. At twelve, he hadn’t cared about that.

She isn’t dressed like a ballerina now.

Her blond hair is a little shorter and straighter, but still the same bright tone. Her clothes are simple, but obviously expensive: a white turtleneck sweater in some sort of furry material, and designer jeans. She’s more or less the same shape, and a little bit taller, but it’s her face, mostly, that makes his mind go blank. It’s less childish. He wonders, suddenly, if his own is. He feels like she looks older than he does. Next to her, he feels like a kid.

“Hey,” he says, lamely.

“I am so pleased,” she purrs, her long dark lashes fluttering, “that you have decided to join me, Michael.”

Something flutters in his stomach, and then his chest, and then definitely tries to escape out of his throat. He in no way recalls eating any insects or anything.

“Uh,” he replies, brilliantly.

She smirks behind her water glass.

“We have much in common, you and I,” she tells him.

“Oh,” he says. “Yeah?”

Because he’s not sure what, exactly, they have in common at all. Ballet, for instance, is super lame. And he’s not sure how she feels about squirrels now, but he’s definitely never liked anything small and furry. Or big and furry, for that matter.

On the flip side, Russian social media is like years behind America’s, and he doesn’t get the impression she games or is interested in computers at all.

“But there will be time to discuss after we eat,” she says.

Mike does not have an adventurous palate, and an impressive selection of mostly unidentifiable food-stuffs is placed in front of him, and Veruca selects a single fork out of the twenty they each have to choose from, and he grasps desperately for something, anything familiar.

“Do you have ketchup?” He asks.

She looks at him like he might be crazy.

“Do you ask me,” she asks, “if we have ketchup in Russia, or if there is ketchup now?”

He stares down at his plate, and no, he doesn’t know if anything on it is supposed to be eaten with ketchup, but he likes ketchup.

“...know you have ketchup in Russia,” he mumbles.

This date is a disaster.

She rings for someone, and a bottle of Russian ketchup is placed in front of him, and he still doesn’t know where to start with the cutlery, or how to turn this around. She stares at him expectantly.

“I...” he says.

“Yes?” She prompts.

“Uh,” he grunts.

“...,” she responds.

“I’veneverbeenonadatebeforeandIdunnowhatyouwantmetodo, okay?!?!?” He blurts.

She bursts out laughing. Her hand flies to her chest. Her eyes are squeezed shut and tearing up with mirth. She practically falls out of her chair.

“You think this is date?” She manages to gasp.

“Uh. Isn’t it?” He asks, numbly.

She laughs even harder, and he feels like he might be shrinking all over again,

“Your...you dad said...,” he mumbles.

“Oh, my papa,” she giggles, wiping her eyes delicately with her finger. “What has he done?”

Mike says nothing. Mike stares down at what is probably the most expensive plate of food that has ever been put in front of him. She snaps her fingers in front of his nose.

“Michael Television...,” she says.

“Not my na-ame,” he moans.

“This is business meeting. I have business proposal for you.”

He looks up, because as much as he wants to die (no chicken involved) that’s...interesting.

“Mr. Wonka,” she says. “He has done the both of us...wrong.”

She adjusts the neck of her sweater, and he remembers suddenly: she was ripped apart. If no one’s ever the same after they’ve been on television, they definitely aren’t after they’ve been ripped apart and put back together. It hasn’t been an easy couple of years for him: he’s still physically stunted. It probably hasn’t been easy for her, either. Her scars are probably a lot more visible.

“So what’re you saying?” He asks. She has his complete attention, and with his ADHD, that’s saying something.

“I want to make him...how do you say...regret this,” she says.

“Like: revenge,” he asks, dubiously. Because as tempting as that sounds, even he knows that’s not a great idea. Who knows what that nut job would do to them?

“No-no,” she insists, waving the idea off. “Well...not like that. But our own revenge. I wish to do something to make Mr. Wonka see that he is wrong about us. That we are not _bad_.”

Mike looks down at his hands, because he’s not entirely sure he isn’t bad, but still: the idea is quickly growing on him.

“You are smart,” she says. And then, raising an eyebrow: “At least: I think you are.”

“I am smart,” he says, simply and confidently, because this is something he at least knows about himself without question.

“Good,” she tells him. “This is what I need.”

It’s a lot easier to talk to her, after that, when he knows where he stands. They brainstorm for hours, their heads bent close together, their words quick and excited, and this...

He hasn’t felt like this in a long time. It’s good.

They have a plan by the end of the evening. They’re going to do something: something amazing. Something so amazing that even Wonka won’t be able to call them bad, or losers: not anymore. He can see it all in his head, and she has the money, and the social skills, and the ambition to make it real.

“You are smart,” she says, as he is leaving.

“Told you,” he says, with a smirk and shrug.

She catches his hand in hers.

“You are also cute,” she whispers.

He floats back to America because they’re really going to do something _and_ she thinks he’s cute.


	12. Prompt: Micheal Salt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Kid Swap, Micheal Salt."

Mike Teavee’s face is a mask of disgust.

“It is pony,” Oleg Salt says.

“Why does it smell like that?” The boy demands to know.

“It smells like pony,” Oleg tells him, hopelessly.

“Grosssssssss,” Mike whines.

THIS IS NOT GOING TO OLEG’S PLAN.

It is American television show, from where he gets the idea. ‘Wife Swap’. Where the husband of the one family goes to see what it is like to be the husband of the other family?

Mrs. Television is full of complaints, always, when the four of them speak. She thinks she has it the worst of all. SHE DOES NOT. Eugene is in agreement: Ethel does not know what it is to have a girl child.

“I wish!” The woman had laughed, once, and it was then that Oleg had thought to show her.

Mrs. Salt is not available, of course. She has lately been in Morocco on vacation for the past seven years with her personal masseuse, Sven (Sven is: great guy). And Mr. Television has been discarded (a wise choice). But they can swap the children. He can send her Veruca for one week, and show her how it is to have the whims of a teenage girl to deal with (Oleg cannot suppress a shudder at the memories). And he will take her American son and show her how easily the boy can be mollified.

Because of course it will be easy. Oleg was a boy once, himself. He knows what a boy wants, and it is not a mother’s coddling. He will ply the Mikhail with the electronics, and the video games, and the boy will fall immediately into line, and Mrs. Television will submit that he is the superior parent.

THIS IS NOT WHAT HAPPENS. дайте ему силы.  
The Television boy shows up innocently enough. Oleg forces his face into a welcoming smile and shows the boy the room (out of the many hundreds of rooms the Salt mansion contains) where he will be staying. The boy walks past him. The boy shuts the door.

Uh. Okay...

He does not appear at supper time. One of the house staff reports that, on knocking, he had been instructed to ‘put an egg inside of his mouth’. что? 

But the boy is just tired, maybe. He has had a long journey. Tomorrow will be a new day.

Oleg awakes at 4:13am with a shriek. Something is poking him in the face. He opens his eyes to find the Television boy standing over him, holding a sword.

WHERE DID HE GET A SWORD?

There is a fencing trophy in the ballroom, with fencing swords, but it is mounted far too high for the small American to reach, and also the swords are soldered into place.

“Yo. Russian dude,” the boy drawls. “I’m hungry now. And I only want Gorton’s fish sticks.” 

“Where is Alexei?” Oleg asks, climbing out of his king sized bed and hurriedly tugging a robe over his silk pajamas. He frantically searches the room for his ex-KGB personal body guard. He finds the man, finally, unconscious in the hallways.

“I dunno what’s up with that guy,” Mike says, looking at the ceiling.

HE KNOWS.

It is the next day, when Oleg knows he is truly in trouble.

Government officials in dark suits and glasses stand in his office. Oleg rubs his temples.

“Huuuuuuuuh?” the boy says, with exaggerated innocence.

“Did you. Collude with somebody. On the interwebs?” Oleg asks, slowly and painfully.

“I unno what you mean,” the boy replies. “I’m just a kid.”

“Mikhail...”

“Who’s Mikhail?” 

“This is not game,” Oleg informs the boy, in a hushed whisper.

The boy just blinks his big, blue, American eyes and has no idea how much money Oleg has to shell out to keep him out of a Russian prison. 

And as for plying him with video games...

“I have that one.”

“I have that one.”

“I already pirated that one. It’s like two months old,” he says, in response to everything Oleg tries to present him with. And what child does not want a pony? Mike Teavee, that is what child. The only headway he makes is when he desperately offers:

“I will buy for you Large Hadron Super Collider!”

The boy had paused.

“Hmmm. Control over the unsolved questions of physics. I’ll think about it.”

Instead he manages to set the stair railing on fire. Twice.

He sends the cooking staff on a strike with his very particular but infantile culinary requirements. 

He hacks Oleg’s companies’ webpages and changes every instance of the word ‘salt’ to ‘fart’. 

THE BOY IS MONSTER.

It is Thursday, and there is still one more day of dealing with him to do, and Oleg CANNOT. Instead, he sobs openly in one of the less formal living rooms. The boy watches him. The boy rolls his eyes with his entire body. The boy stomps over, dragging his feet the whole way. He throws himself onto the couch beside Mr. Salt.

“I hate when adults cry,” he grouses.

He takes out his phone, opens a note taking app and announces.

“Ooooookay. Doctor Mike is in session, I guess. I bill by the minute.”

“This was not supposed to be like this!” Oleg cries. The boy grimaces, but dutifully writes...something.

“Go on,” he says.

“I only wanted to show... The teenage girls you see: they are not like us. My Verushka: she is liking THE BOYS. She wants to shop for the brassieres! What is a father to do?”

“Whoa, too many deets, too many deets, too many deets,” Mike exclaims, clapping his hands over his ears. 

“And you!” Oleg accuses. “You are not teenage girl.”

“Uh, no duh?” the boy replies.

“And yet you are like this!”

Mike shrugs.

“You are impossible!” Oleg declares.

Mike beams.

“I...I do not know what you want! My Verushka: she always tells me what she wants!” Oleg says, burying his face in his hands.

The boy blows out a breath and rolls his eyes again.

“Yeah, but do you ever ask why she wants?” He says.

...

Wha?

...

And: no. No he does not. He simply...gives to her.

He can see how the boy might have a point.

“To be parent,” Oleg says. “It is hard.”

“Well yeah,” Mike agrees. “Did you think it was gonna be easy? Why? Kids aren’t you, you know? We’re our own people.”

Oleg looks him over.

“So what is one to do with you?” He asks.

“I dunno. Maybe try talking to us.” Mike suggests, with a shrug. “You know: like you’d talk to anybody else.”

THIS IS PREPOSTEROUS. And yet.

“You are smart boy,” Oleg admits, earnestly, for the first time. 

“I go through an average of four therapists per year,” the boy tells him, proudly.

“So. What is it that you want?” Oleg asks.

“Easy,” Mike tells him. “I wanna go home.”

“And: why?” Oleg asks, carefully.

“’Cause I didn’t wanna come here in the first place,” Mike says. “I’m not, like, something you can use to prove a point or win kudos. That’s a total jerk move.

Oleg Salt, total jerk, nods.

“So. You wish to go home,” he repeats.

“Yup,” Mike says.

“THIS I CAN DO,” Oleg tells him enthusiastically. The boy cringes away.

In America, Mrs. Televsion opens the door. She is blond now, wearing a pink dress and pink lipstick. Her nails are pink. Her glasses are pink. She is sipping something out of a tea cup covered in images of kittens. Veruca stands beside her, sipping from her own kittens.

Mike wrinkles his nose.

“You look weird, mom,” he says. “I don’t like it.”

“Thank you, Michael,” Mrs. Television says, smoothly. Her son walks past them.

“I’m going to my room, leave me alone!” He calls, before disappearing into the suburban house.

Well.

Veruca hugs the older woman.

“Good-bye, Mrs. Ethel,” she says.

“You travel safe, honey,” Mrs. Television instructs.

Well.

“We should,” Oleg says, “maybe not do this again.”

“Mmmhmm,” Ethel says.

He returns to Russia with the correct child. And who has won? The answer is obvious.

His Verushka, of course.


	13. Prompt: Holiday Shopping

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Mike being subject to the hells of holiday shopping."

Just because they’re Jewish, doesn’t mean Mike gets to escape THE MALL AT CHRISTMAS TIME.

Because they’re not, like, _that_ Jewish. (Mike in particular doesn’t really know what he believes or doesn’t on that front, and is in no hurry to figure it out because it’s _boring_.) Like they still decorate the house and everything, Santa just isn’t present His mom puts up lights and stuff, though. Ethel is not willing to be the owner of the only house on the street that’s dark this time of year. People would notice. Normalton would talk (more than they already do). And they always have a tree. Ethel can call it a Hanukkah bush, and dress it in as much silver and blue as she wants, but Mike knows a Christmas tree when he sees one.

And Hanukkah is basically as commercialized as Christmas now, anyway. Nobody gets a dreidel anymore. It’s the twenty-first century: little Jewish boys get video games. Little Jewish girls get...well, Mike doesn’t know. Whatever lame stuff girls like. Hair...bows?

So Ethel has to shop for that. And Ethel needs to shop for her co-workers. And Ethel needs to festively decorate her classroom.

Mike doesn’t like to go...anywhere, if he doesn’t have to, but especially to the mall. Doesn’t get the appeal. Don’t all the other Youths know about Amazon Prime? The mall is crowded, and the lighting is terrible, and it all smells like old lady perfume, McDonald’s fries, and the kind of cleaning products janitors use after somebody throws up. The mall is not cool and no one should hang there, and Mike would usually refuse to go.

Except.

The electronics stores and gaming stores have _deals_ this time of year. Sometimes stuff you can’t even get online until way after the release date or from a re-seller, and Mike Teavee doesn’t do waiting or getting ripped off, and Ethel is easily flustered by any technology that was invented after the stone age. If he doesn’t go with her, and tell her what to get, there’s a good chance he’ll end up with an R.B.I. Baseball game or something equally as sports-y. (His mom has actual favorite sports-ball teams and everything. It’s so embarrassing.) 

So. He goes. (More accurately: allows himself to be dragged.)

It’s the worst, always. (And Mike is a boy who has been to a deadly chocolate factory: he would know.) Almost not worth it. 

The crush of strangers in his personal space.

The pushy sales people.

Ethel’s yearly insistence that he needs a ‘smart’ holiday outfit, even though he never has, and is never going to be invited anywhere where a ‘smart’ outfit would be necessary. He’s thirteen: he will not be attending any office holiday parties. They are not invited to any family get-togethers. He will roll out of bed every morning (or...afternoon...) in December, same as the...whatever time the day before, and Ethel should count herself lucky if he changes out of his pajamas. 

Nevertheless: she persists.

She only has herself to blame.

“I hope you’re happy,” she mutters.

He is, pretty much.

They are standing in the parking lot outside of Target, along with everyone else who was, until just recently, trying to shop in Target, and also all of the Target employees. It’s not hard to send a false alarm to the local fire department, but it is (Mike thinks) satisfying. 

Ethel drags him away before anyone can start pointing fingers.

She doesn’t say a word the whole ride home. Which isn’t a problem, as far as Mike is concerned.

Back at the house, she heads straight for her room and shuts the door. That’s Mike’s patented move, so he’s a little miffed she has tried to swipe it. Also that he has to carry everything they’ve bought in, because she has forgotten and their bags are all mixed together. He’s not doll-sized anymore, but he’s still small for his age, and Ethel has bought a lot.

She doesn’t have anything to say the next evening at dinner either. Again: this is fine.

By day three he gets it: this is the silent treatment. But Mike sometimes goes for weeks without speaking to another living person.

Except.

He doesn’t. Ethel has always been there. He just doesn’t think about her like that. Like: another living person. She’s a mom. She’s like...the kitchen table. The weird stain on the bathroom wall. He would only notice if she wasn’t there...

And she isn’t suddenly. She’s there, physically, in the house, but she doesn’t... _try_. Even when he was eight inches tall and biting her, she was never like this.

(When he was eight inches tall and everything was so big, so frightening, so hard, so wrong, and she had done everything, just like she had threatened at Wonka’s, only it hadn’t been a threat at all: it had been a promise.)

Being shrunk is a distant memory now, even though it wasn’t actually that long ago. Mike is his horrible self again.

Ethel is not, and by the end of the week, Mike has had it. So he does something about it. 

It’s closer to Christmas, so the mall is even more crowded this time. People don’t pay attention to small boys, no matter how big their hair is, and Mike ends up getting pushed and elbowed more than once. There is also a family in matching Christmas sweaters that seems to be everywhere and it takes all of his strength not to turn and run. Puke, then turn and run.

But Mike is a stubborn boy. He gets it from his mother. 

She’s getting the menorah set up for night one, when he places the package on the table next to her and plunks down in a chair.

“What’s this?” She asks, suspiciously, finally breaking her silence.

“Hanukkah,” he tells her.

She hesitantly unwraps the box. There is a lot of tape to get through. Mike is not a good wrapper.

Inside the box are...eight sweaters. They aren’t Ethel’s style: plain, dark colored pull-overs. Ethel likes bright colors. Ethel wears cardigans. Mike knows this.

“I suppose,” she says, holding up the top-most sweater (that is obviously too small for her), “it’s the thought that-...”

She trails off because Mike has moved to stand _behind_ the sweater, and he can actually see the moment when she realizes who it is not too small for.

“OH,” she says. And then: “Oh.”

And he thinks she might cry.

“Oh, Mikey,” she exclaims, wrapping her arms around him. He wriggles in her clutches.

“Mo-om,” he whines, until she releases him. 

“Right,” she says. She hands him the sweater. He retreats to his room. He returns shortly, wearing the sweater over a plaid button down shirt. He is still wearing jeans and sneakers, because there is only so far that he will go. Ethel gazes at him adoringly. She moves to swoop in and squeeze him again.

“Hey!” He barks. “Don’t push it.”

She pats him very gently on the shoulder instead.

He lets her.

It’s Hanukkah, after all.


	14. Prompt: Mike, Veruca, and the Great Flu of 2017

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "May I request a story where Mike is, against his will, somehow back in the Salt residence with Veruca, who at the time has the flu. Oleg is busy and can’t take care of her so it’s up to Mike to do so in a tragically hilarious way, that ends up bringing them closer together."
> 
> You may. Sorry this took so long: Christmas, you know?

Veruca Salt’s room is very, very big, and very, very pink, and Mike Teavee feels very, very out of place here. He hates it. A room can’t tell him he doesn’t fit in: rooms can’t even talk.

But Veruca has one of those museum rooms (one of those museum houses). Everything looks ridiculously expensive and untouchable, and Mike wants to knock it all over out of spite.

He shouldn’t, though.

Don’t get him wrong: normally, he would. But: Veruca is sick.

He hadn’t even wanted to come here: to the Salt mansion. To Russia. But Ethel has won some Russian cruise: ten days, all expenses paid (open bar), and Ethel isn’t going to pass up something like that. There’s just the no-longer-so-small problem of: Mike.

Her prize had included no plus one.

Mike isn’t sure how his mom and Mr. Salt started talking (and if Ethel is being courted by some weird Russian dude, Mike just plain doesn’t want to know; he has to sleep sometimes), but somehow plans were made (despite his protests) for him to stay with the Salts while Ethel enjoyed her winnings. As if they have gotten to the point where absolutely no one in the entire United States will take him. Well. He might take a little pride in that.

But Ethel thinks, for some reason, that he’ll have fun here. She has convinced herself that he and Veruca got along well on the Wonka tour. That’s not exactly how Mike remembers things.

He remembers: a stuck up girl who wouldn’t show him that furry lollipop, even though he asked nice and everything. He remembers: a girl placing her hands on his back and shoving, sending him stumbling and almost face-planting into the floor on more than one occasion, and thinking it was sooooo funny (it wasn’t funny). He remembers: a girl rubbing her ability to walk on invisible marshmallows in his face (but mostly he remembers getting kicked in the nuts by an invisible horse, and the rest of it is kind of hazy due to invisible head trauma).

And okay, sure, she threw a pretty impressive tantrum, but that doesn’t make up for everything else. Plus! No one seems concerned that she’ll cough her plague up on him.

Maybe they think he’s easier to deal with when sick. They are so very wrong.

It’s all a load of bull, and Mike is going to make someone pay, hard, but you can’t wreck up a sick girl’s room. Even Mike isn’t that much of a terror.

He glares at her instead.

She looks...gross, honestly. Her nose and cheeks are red and dry. Her blonde hair is flat and a little greasy. Her eyes are puffy. She’s propped up on a ridiculous mound of pillows. She frowns at him.

“Oh,” she says, sounding disappointed.

Mike folds his arms and glares a little harder. It’s not his fault if nobody told her he was coming. 

“‘Oh’ to you too,” he says. “I’m staying here, in case you were too into yourself to notice that that was happening.”

The staff member who had escorted him to her room has slipped away, he can’t help but notice. He envies the guy. He’s probably stuck here until he or someone else comes back. The Salt mansion is vast, and even a nearly fourteen year old boy could easily get lost here. 

Veruca rolls her eyes, and drags herself more upright. 

“I know you are staying, dummkopf,” she says. And then has an extended coughing fit. Mike takes several steps back, grimacing and putting his hand over his own mouth, as though that might help. She waves her hand in his general direction.

“This: I was not expecting,” she rasps.

“Well I wasn’t expecting-...”

He’s about to say ‘germ warfare’, but instead he says:

“Wait, what’s that supposed to mean?”

Veruca blows her nose indelicately.

“You are supposed to be small,” she informs him, along with a hand motion to indicate how small (shrunk-to-fit-a-screen small).

He’s struck momentarily speechless. And then he isn’t.

“WHO TOLD YOU ABOUT THAT???” He shrieks. 

They’d managed to keep the results of his little...’accident’ (it wasn’t an accident) from going public. He’d hidden at home until a package full of vitamin-like candies had arrived in the mail (return post-marked ‘Charlie Bucket’), which had slowly restored him to nearly normal size (he remains: two inches shorter than he was the day he walked through Wonka’s gates). He’s not sure if Bucket alone sent the things, or if Wonka himself had something to do with it, and he doesn’t particularly care. He’s just grateful not to be tiny anymore. He can at least take some solace in the fact that Ethel had remembered almost immediately that taking care of something small and helpless that can’t tell you what is wrong is terrible, and that she hadn’t enjoyed herself either.

But no one is supposed to know about any of it.

Veruca smirks ominously, and he can’t help but be a little impressed when she says:

“We do not need to be told such things. We have money. There is nothing we cannot know if we want.” 

And then she ruins it by continuing:

“A little mouse sized boy: this is so cute!”

She points at his current boy-sized body.

“This is useless.”

“You’re useless,” he spits back, on instinct. “And your intel is, like, a year out of date. And I wasn’t cute!”

He wasn’t. He isn’t. ...So why doesn’t he like it when she agrees so readily?

“I suppose it is no good to tell my papa that I do not want you any more,” she sniffs. And sniffles. Her fingers press against her temples.

“Uh, it’s not like I wanna be here either,” he tells her. “I’m only here because my mom won a stupid...”

He trails off, because her smirk is back, and could put one of his own to shame.

“Why’re you looking at me like that?” He asks.

“You stupid American boy,” she says. “You know how easy it is to rig contest.”

It hits him like a ton of bricks. He should have known the odds of his mom winning a contest like that (and he does know: he can calculate them in his head, he just didn’t before because there hadn’t been any reason to). He sits heavily on the end of her bed, mouth hanging open.

“You...catfished my mom,” he murmurs. “That’s...kind of awesome.”

She preens a little. She does not seem to realize she looks like crap. 

“I know,” she purrs. “But you ruin everything. I am supposed to be only girl in the whole world with little mouse boy.”

“No. And for ten days,” he snorts.

When she doesn’t agree, he jumps to his feet.

“You weren’t gonna get to keep me!”

“Why not?” She says, more than asks. As if it all makes perfect sense, and he’s being unreasonable.

“I’m a person. That’s like kidnapping!” He insists.

She waves his protests away.

“It would not be kidnapping. You would want to stay. I would give you anything you want,” she tells him.

“What about when I wanted to go home?” He asks, sarcastically. 

“You would not want to!” She says again, and he’s pleased by her annoyance and lack of real retort.

“You can’t tell me what I want,” he tells her. “And newsflash: if I was still shrunk, my mom could have just shoved me in her purse and taken me wherever. Which: I also hated, but: she could have, and I wouldn’t even be here in the first place.”

Veruca’s mouth opens. Then closes. The opens. Then closes.

“Papochka!” She shrieks. “You have tricked me!”

She hurls one of her pillows across the room, and she hurls pretty good for a girl, but her room is huge and she doesn’t do any damage. She flops back into the remaining billions of pillows.

“Why he do this?” She asks, pouting. 

Mike doesn’t answer, because why would she even be asking him? How would he know? But she keeps staring at him until he blurts:

“How should I know?”

Just to get her to stop.

“Maybe he’s sick of you making him get you stuff that you just forget about and throw away,” he mutters.

She sits bolt upright in bed, wrestles with her blankets a moment, then crawls furiously towards him on her hands and knees.

“I DO NOT throw away,” she hisses, and he takes several steps back again from the alarming intensity in her eyes. “Everything that is mine is mine. Is always mine. Is mine, mine, MINE!”

She falls into another coughing fit, and Mike considers bolting for the door, except...

There’s something red on the blankets now.

“Are...are you coughing up blood?” He squeaks. “Holy crap, you’re coughing up blood! You have some crazy Russian disease and you’re coughing up blood!”

It is gross.

“Is nose bleed,” she informs him, pinching her nose between her fingers. “You are such baby.”

“I’m not a baby!” He whines, looking around for whatever she uses to summon her servants. “How do you get your dad to come?”

She crawls back to her pillows, still pinching her nose.

“My papa will not come for nosebleed,” she says.

“Why not?” He asks. It is, maybe, a stupid question.

“Because he is busy!” She explains, sounding exasperated that she has to.

“But you’re sick,” Mike points out. “And bleeding.”

He shudders involuntarily.

“So? I am sure your mamma does not stop all of her everything any time you are a little sick.”

“Um,” says Mike.

Because she does, actually. If there’s one thing Ethel is diligent about, it’s taking care of him. Even when he doesn’t want her to; when he’d much rather be left alone in his own misery. She’s there, shoving soup and medicine down his usually resisting throat, and forcing him to stay in bed, while some substitute handles her classes. When she herself inevitably catches whatever he had, she does not stay home sick. He’s always thought that was dumb of her.

Maybe it’s not dumb. Maybe it’s something else.

“Oh,” Veruca says, softly.

She rolls onto her side, back to him, and pulls her blankets up to her chin.

“This is so wonderful for you,” she says, flatly. “You go away now.” 

You don’t have to tell Mike Teavee twice. He turns on his heel, marches out the door, and...

Stops in the hall. And not just because he has no idea where he is or what he’s supposed to do with himself.

He feels sorry for her. As much as he insults Ethel, he can’t imagine her actualy not being around, especially if he was sick.

He blows out a breath. He kicks a wall and leaves a satisfying mark on it. The feeling doesn’t go away. He sighs.

“Hey, Russian guy,” he calls out, to one of the Salt’s numerous staff. “Do you speak English?”

A half an hour later he’s back in her room.

“I thought I told you go away,” she points out.

“Yeah,” he says with a shrug. “Buuuuut, I don’t do what people tell me to, so.”

He drags the chair from her vanity over so that he can sit beside her bed. One of the staff places a tray in her lap. She looks down at it.

“What is this?” She asks.

“Soup,” Mike tells her.

“It does not look like Cook’s soup,” she says, poking at the nearly florescent yellow liquid with a spoon.

“It’s not,” Mike says. “That was crap soup. This is Campbell's chicken noodle. It comes in a can, you heat it in a microwave, and it costs ninety-nine cents and it’s the only thing you’re supposed to eat when you’re sick.”

She brings a spoonful to her mouth.

“Ugh, it is like liquid salt,” she declares, wrinkling her nose.

“That’s how you know it’s good for you,” Mike says, propping his feet up on the edge of her bed. He pulls out his phone and fires up a game, watching her out of the corner of his eye. She gets down half the bowl of soup, which is acceptable when you are sick. Now she’s watching him.

He stands, moves the tray to safe place on the floor, and starts to pull her blankets off the bed.

“What you doing???” She yelps, grabbing for them.

“You’re sick,” he says. “You gotta go sleep on a couch.”

“I am sleep, on bed, глупый,” she points out.

“Yeah, but I don’t make the rules,” Mike tells her with a shrug, having won the struggle over her blankets easily. “So, either you point me towards a couch, or I’m gonna be wandering around with your blankets for a while. It’s your choice.”

She chooses, wisely, to direct him to one of the less formal living rooms, where he cocoons her on the couch.

“My bed is more comfortable than this,” she complains.

“Everybody’s is,” he admits. “But this is how you do it.”

He leaves briefly, only to return with another member of staff carrying several glasses of liquids, and yet another who sets up a laptop on an ottoman in front of her. All of the staff seem vaguely confused by Mike, but too tired to try to defy him. Mike plunks down next to her cocoon and brandishes a bottle with English writing on it.

“I didn’t know what any of your Russian meds were, but trust me: this is the good stuff.”

“Robot...Ushin,” she says, squinting at the bottle. “Robot ushin?”

“...sure,” Mike agrees, pouring until the medicine fills the little dosage cup entirely, paying no attention to the amount that is actually recommended. “My mom...brought-”

Smuggled. To knock him out on the plane.

“-it from home. It tastes gross.”

She pulls a face, like she did with the soup, but swallows it down. 

“And now?” She asks.

“The most important part,” he announces, “T.V. It is a known fact that the only way to recover from a cold is to mainline T.V.” 

He leans forward and pulls up Netflix on her laptop.

“James Bond,” she says, in a hushed, almost reverent tone.

“What about it?” Mike asks.

“James Bond marathon,” she repeats. “Make James Bond marathon go NOW!” 

“Okay, okay,” he says, searching for ‘Casino Royale’.

“Noooooooo,” she moans. “The good James Bond.” 

“Who’s ‘the good James Bond’?” He asks, incredulously.

She just raises an eyebrow at him until he has scrolled all the way back to ‘Goldfinger’, at which point she nods, and settles back into the pillows he has arranged behind her.

“Sean Connery: so dreamy,” she murmurs.

“Ew,” Mike says.

By the end of the movie, either the Robitussin is taking her down, or her fever has spiked back up. She curls up on her side and looks miserable and heavy-eyed.

“Apple juice, orange juice, or Coca-Cola?” He asks.

“Mmmmm,” she moans, and it’s clearly going to take more than hydration to make her feel better.

“Sometimes,” he admits, begrudgingly, “my mom pets my hair.”

She looks surprised that he has admitted to this, but does not hesitate to lay her head on the pillow he places across his lap. He runs a hand very gently over her hair, the way Ethel does back in Idaho, the way he knows he likes.

“Mmm,” she says again, softly. It is not a moan this time.

“My mom,” he says, “thought we got along. Back at Wonka’s.”

Veruca lets out a croaking bark of a laugh.

“That’s what I said too,” Mike agrees.

“You were annoying,” Veruca says.

“You were annoying,” Mike replies, instantly.

“Now, you are less annoying,” she admits. “...were you really shrunkened?”

His jaw tightens.

“Yeah,” he says, shortly, hoping she will get the hint and change the subject. She does. Sort of.

“It is my papa, who tells me of this. But I think he knew you were not anymore,” she says. “I think: we have been both played.”

He stops stroking her hair.

“What?” He says.

She shakes her head.

“Do not stop,” she demands.

“Your mamma,” she slurs, once he has begun petting her hair again. “She do this every time you are sick?”

“Yeah,” he admits.

“She is good mamma,” she says.

“Yeah,” Mike agrees.

Because for all the faults they both know she has, Mike does happen to think his mom is a good a mom.

“You are good mamma,” she giggles.

“Uh, let’s get one thing straight-...”

But Veruca is asleep, or at least pretending to be.

He returns to America with a bad cold and Veruca Salt’s phone number.


	15. Prompt: Cowboy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I take things literally.

“Oh. My. This is. Unexpected,” Wonka says through a tight grin which is threatening to dissolve into full out laughter. “Not to worry, of course, I’ll have you fixed in a jiffy. I’ll just-…”

He holds up a finger to indicate that he will only be a moment, then dashes off, muffling his laughter with his hand.

Mike stands, still and rigid, his lips pressed tightly together. He dares not open his mouth, lest it happen again.

They’re regular visitors to the factory now: the four Golden Ticket winners who lost. Each child and parent has more or less made their peace with Wonka; has been forgiven by the chocolatier for their transgressions. They’re invited back to try his and Charlie’s newest inventions. Today, they are in the mixing room: Augustus Gloop, Veruca Salt, Violet Beauregarde, Charlie Bucket, and Mike Teavee.

And they are all laughing at Mike Teavee.

His face is hot and (he is quite sure) red with humiliation. He can feel the color creep along his cheeks and up to the tips of his ears. Veruca and Violet are breathless with their laughter. Even Augustus is giggling. Their parents, at least, are in another room, sampling more adult beverages. He does not want to think about their added amusement at his predicament, or how his mother might fuss. Although, he supposes, he will know soon enough, if Wonka cannot fix him after all.

“It…it wasn’t supposed to do that! I swear,” goody-goody Bucket swears, his voice cracking a little with both laughter and puberty.

Mike tightens his hands into fists, and half thinks: yeah right, because this is exactly the kind of prank Wonka would pull (and Mike would think it was hilarious if it’d been pulled on anyone else), or prank candy he’d make.

But the old man knows how Mike feels about being laughed at. They’ve talked. He’s talked to the other kids too. He knows them. They know each other. The Candy Man might have a childish sense of humor that’s just a tiny bit twisted, but he’s not malicious.

That doesn’t make Mike feel any better at the moment. Despite his fists and stillness, behind him: his tail swishes.

Veruca and Violet dissolve into new hysterics, falling over one another. Augustus shifts to get a better view of the new appendage. Mike swivels his backside away and glares the other boy down.

“Es tut mir leid,” Augustus apologizes, looking down at his feet (or where his feet would be, if he could see them). “It is just-…”

There is nothing Mike would like more now, than to give them all a piece of his mind. To yell. To scream at them to shut up until they do, but he can’t, because-…

“He is cow boy!” Veruca shrieks, as if nothing has ever been funnier. Violet has reeled herself back to a chuckle. Her eyes sparkle at him.

Mike squeezes his own eyes shut. He can feel the tears pricking at them, and he cannot let himself cry. That would be even worse than what he has already done.

He has mooed.

It had started almost immediately after he’d put the candy sample in his mouth: an aching in his head that he now knows is a small pair of horns jutting out from under his hat.

He’d opened his mouth to say ‘ow’.

“Moo,” had come out instead.

He’d opened his mouth to say: ‘what?”

“Moo?” Had come out instead.

He’d slapped a hand over his mouth and hadn’t tried to say anything else since. 

Violet raises an eyebrow.

“You think we gonna have to milk him?”

“MOO,” he wails. It’s high and nasally, and he can almost hear his own voice in it, but it refuses to come out. He’s overwhelmed by the helplessness of it, but there’s nothing he can do but turn on his heel and press himself against the wall of the inventing room. The wall feels cool against his overheated face and still aching head. It shuts the world out a little bit, although he can still hear them speaking in suddenly hushed voices.

“Violet,” Charlie admonishes.

“Michael is not a girl,” Gus points out.

It’s exactly like before.

Well, not exactly. But it manages to replicate one of the worst aspects of being shrunk: his voice has been taken away again. He knows what he’s saying, but try as he might, he cannot make anyone else understand. 

It’s hard enough work being understood when he’s his usual self. Not just because his mother always seems to be talking about or to some boy he never actually was, but because his words always seem to come out wrong (or wrong according to other people). Mike is a small boy stuck in the middle of nowhere. He isn’t rich, or important, no matter how smart he is. His words are all he has a lot of the time. Sometimes, he can even make people listen, and then he’s real. Not insignificant.

But he’s back there now, in his mind, tiny and terrified. Screaming helplessly into the void. Everything is too big, and too loud, and too strong, and too much. Even the lightest of touches leaves a bruise, and he is hungry, and thirsty, and hurting, and tired, and afraid, and no one knows, and no one will ever know, so no one cares. How can they care if they don’t know?

The treatments to try to return him to anything like a normal size are terrible, and he can’t take his meds, and panic attacks grip him and he cannot lose himself in his phone, or a game to calm himself down. He’s too small: they cannot see that he is shaking. They cannot hear that he is crying. He tries and tries, and wears himself out until he feels like he is nothing.

And they are relieved, secretly, he thinks, that they no longer have to hear what he wants to say; no longer have to know what he feels.

He’s just a boy, and he feels things like any other boy. But no one ever wants to know; not really. 

He’s shaking now, in the present day. His palms are pressed hard against the wall. But something has closed in around him. 

There are four other bodies of various sizes gathered close to him. They say his name softly.

“Mike.”

“Michael.”

“I’m sorry, Teavee, I didn’t mean it.”

“Even I will stop.”

They don’t touch him. They know he doesn’t like it, sometimes. He turns slowly to face them, slumping against the wall.

“We’re going to fix this. I promise, Mike,” says Charlie Bucket, who is growing like a weed and stands eye to eye with him. Bucket’s eyes are determined. Eye contact is tiring, and Mike stops trying to hold it, but nods slowly. The others around him murmur in agreement. They will not leave him. They will not send him back to Idaho like this.

They’re all kids still, and they act like any kids would. But they’ve all grown up too; faster than they would have had they never visited the factory. That’s probably not something Wonka ever intended.

But not all side effects are entirely bad.


	16. Prompt: Bodyswap: Mike Gloop

Something is…off. Ethel Teavee can’t quite put her finger on it. She glances at her son to see if, perhaps, he has noticed as well.

Anthony has not.

He looks the way he always does. The way he always has (hasn’t he?). Tall. Blond haired and blue eyed. Ruddy cheeked. All American. Nothing like her or her ex-husband, with their dark hair and slim, nonathletic frames. Sometimes, Ethel wonders…

Well, no. No she doesn’t. Anthony is her son, and he’s a good boy. Polite. Cheerful, even when he’s playing football, which he excels at. He’s known, in their little suburban town. He fits in so well. Better than she does. And now he’s won a Golden Ticket: a tour of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. He’s thrilled, of course (what twelve year old wouldn’t be?), and she’s so very proud.

And if he’s just a little…

Well. Ethel doesn’t want to say ‘dim’. He isn’t dim. His grades are perfectly adequate, it’s just…

Well, he’s no genius. And Ethel had just always thought… It’s silly, but it nags at her: the feeling that her son ought to be (should have been) a genius. She’s not sure where it comes from: she’s no genius herself, nor is Norman. They are both intelligent, certainly, but that’s all. There’s no reason to think Anthony might have been anything more. And yet, she has always (hasn’t she always?)…

She must be jet-lagged, that’s all. Her thoughts are jumbled. She is standing in the famous Wonka factory, beside the sort of boy any mother would be proud of. Nothing is off here. She shouldn’t…

She shouldn’t want the darn kid to give her some space. Oh, where had that come from? She has never (hasn’t she?)…

But. Anthony can be just a little…or lot…clingy. And there’s nothing wrong with that! With a boy Velcro-ed to her side until she feels like she can’t breathe. No. She doesn’t mind. She doesn’t secretly wish he were more independent. She doesn’t feel like he ought to be a different sort of boy entirely.

(At least, she is sure, she hasn’t before today).

She could certainly have it a lot worse. Like the German boy’s mother.

She hasn’t been able to take her eyes off the German ticket winner since he hauled himself up off the floor in Wonka’s receiving room, and his mother hovers by him so closely and so constantly that the Gloop woman is in her field of vision as well. Ethel tells herself her eye is drawn by the fact that the pair look as though they might explode at any moment (but another part of her says that that isn’t what it is). She has never seen such a miserable looking boy.

He looks overfed, for a start, but green around the gills: like he could not eat another bite of food without throwing up (which does not, Ethel thinks, bode well for a tour of a chocolate factory where there are likely to be tastings). He isn’t obese: Ethel has certainly seen fatter boys. But he looks: fatter than he should, somehow. He’s plump, with heavy thighs for a boy, and a round belly under a home-knitted sweater that he keeps pawing at like it is burning him. He should take it off: he’s probably overheated with all that extra weight that he isn’t used to (not that she knows, how could she know? The boy has probably been overweight his whole life, from the looks of his mother, who is equally well padded. And it’s none of her business). His face in particular holds her gaze: it’s almost as though she can she another face underneath it. One with slimmer cheeks and a sharper jawline and a smirk…

The boy (who she has heard Mrs. Gloop call ‘Michelle’, even though that is a girl’s name) does not really look like his mother either. Mrs. Gloop is blond and ruddy (a bit like Anthony). Her son is pale, with floppy coal-black hair and not terribly German-looking features. His face and nose are long-ish. Maybe that’s why it seems so easy to picture him thinner. Maybe.

He has looked…distressed, is the only word for it, from the moment he set foot in Wonka’s factory. Ethel can’t remember if he seemed the same when he was interviewed for the Chocolate News. She knows that he was, she just…cannot for the life of her remember his interview at the moment. Well why should she? He isn’t her son… 

But he looks incredibly uncomfortable in his own skin, and his discomfort makes Mrs. Gloop uncomfortable as she fawns over him, adjusting the sweater that rides up his belly and backside, trying to offer him snacks, trying to get him to shake the mood he has fallen into, to no avail. He cringes from her touch, pushes away the food, plucks at his sweater, and gulps in huge slow breaths of air, like he is seething about something. 

The boy is having an axiety attack: Ethel can recognize it immediately from her own experiences (Anthony does not have them). Mrs. Gloop seems lost: on the verge of some kind of attack herself, or at the very least a crying jag. Ethel sympathizes. Well. She has never been driven to tears by Anthony’s behavior, but…

She can imagine, for some reason. For some reason…

She should go to Mrs. Gloop. Their children may be competing, but the woman is clearly in over her head, so frayed at the edges she could snap, and Willy Wonka is certainly not going to help. The chocolatier had taken one look at all of them and shaken his head as if they had answered him incorrectly. Then he had opened his mouth, and Ethel had prepared herself for the beginning of the tour, but the man had shut it just as quickly. His hand had flown to the small goatee on his chin.

“NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT,” he had exclaimed, before dashing from the room without further explanation, leaving them all to stand around awkwardly.

Ethel is about to move in Mrs. Gloop’s direction, when the German boy’s wide eyes roll around the room and land on hers.

And it is…

He is…

It’s almost there. On the tip of her tongue, but she cannot put her finger on it. The boy’s eyes are blue (more blue, even, than Anthony’s), with dark circles under them, and sharp. The boy is smart, she knows, instantly (she is a teacher, she knows what smart looks like). Very, very, very smart, and she is surprised, because Mrs. Gloop does not look terribly smart, and while she does look upset, it is because she doesn’t know what to do.

The boy knows. He feels it too: the wrongness. He does not know what to do about it, but he is thinking; his mind is fighting. He is not some slow German yokel. Ethel cannot look away.

“Hi!” Anthony chirps, beside her, and the German boy’s gaze shifts, and Ethel grits her teeth. Why does he always have to be so…bubbly?

The Gloop boy does not look back at her, as much as she wishes he would. He narrows his eyes at Anthony. Takes in his jeans and sneakers and sports jersey and sunny disposition and willingness to please and wrinkles his nose.

“Willst du mich verarschen?” the boy mutters.

“…no?” Anthony replies. He seems slightly confused. Ethel is as well. She hadn’t known Anthony knew German.

The Gloop boy balls his hands into fists and screws his chubby face into a grimace.

“You are all stupid!” He shrieks. “Can you not see it? Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

He pants and claws at himself again. Mrs. Gloop gasps, and her hands flutter around him, as if afraid he will slap them away. Everyone stares at him. The little Russian hip hop dancer. The gum chewer obsessed with animals. That little poor girl and her grandmother. 

“Rühr mich nicht an!” He whines desperately at his mother. Mrs. Gloop is gnawing at her own fingernails. “Not! Not…”

Ethel has no idea what he is saying (although she thinks ‘not’ means…’night’?), but she finds herself…agreeing, somehow. With his sentiment. Her head bobs. Her own fists clench around the handle of her purse.

“I think we’re all gonna have a really great time,” Anthony declares, beaming.

“Oh for Pete’s sake, Anthony, dial it back for once!” Ethel says.

And then slaps her hand over her mouth. She can’t believe she has just said that.

(Even if it’s accurate.)

Anthony’s smile finally falters. Mrs. Gloop reaches out and pats him on the forearm. He looks at her gratefully. Both of their brows furrow as they continue to look at one another. 

“Heh.”

The Gloop boy is looking at her again. He has almost laughed. His face has cracked into an almost grin. Her heart soars, for some reason. Why should she care about the approval of some strange little boy?

(But…she does…)

The boy looks away again. The Candy Man has returned.

“Dreadfully sorry about this,” Wonka declares. “I was hoping for a different outcome, but this is simply too different. If you could all direct your eyes here?”

There is a strange little man beside him, with bright orange hair, and Ethel has the oddest sensation she has seen him, or someone like him before. Surely she hasn’t. 

The little man is holding a giant lollipop: the kind made of rainbow swirls. It’s certainly nice looking, but Ethel doesn’t see what-…

Wonka grabs the edge of the lollipop and spins it. And the world spins along.

She is standing in the receiving room of Wonka’s factory, on the day of the Golden Ticket tour. Only she’s been here before. The tour happened months ago. She remembers it all too clearly. And Mike…

Mike.

“Mom?” He sounds unsure of himself, in a way that Mike never does. And still ever so slightly German.

But her son is standing there, staring at her. He’s overweight now, instead of shrunk, like he should be. She’ll have to put him on a diet. …She doesn’t know why that’s the first thought that pops into her head. A few extra pounds, in all honesty, seems light-years easier than trying to cope with a boy the size of a doll with a voice so high it cannot be understood. They have both been so close to the ends of their ropes. And their ropes had little slack to begin with.

Michael looks down at himself. And then up at her again. And then flings himself into her arms. Her breath hitches. Her son so rarely seeks this kind of comfort. Behind them, Antho-…no, Augustus rushes to Mrs. Gloop, and Ethel’s mouth twists into a frown. The kid hadn’t had it that bad.

Mike’s embraces are always brief, and this one is no exception. He draws back and blinks down at a space somewhere between them. He is struggling for his words. Ethel wonders if it is because he is still thinking in German, or if he is becoming her Mike again: the boy who can fit in her hand. Who shrieked and shrieked at first, but as time has stretched on has stopped shrieking; has stopped trying to communicate at all. Who only stares at her with an expression she cannot completely read because his face is so small, but she thinks may be: hopelessness. The chubby Mike, of here and now, looks up at her again.

“M’sorry,” he mumbles.

“And one more spin should do it,” Wonka says.

The world is solid beneath their feet. Mike stands in front of her, skinny and not really near five feet tall, but with the potential to be some day. He’s wearing what he wore that day at the factory: the camo joggers; the orange and lime green hoodie. Augustus Gloop, nearly spherical, still clutches his mother, in a sweater and shorts. Violet Beauregarde adjusts her sparkling velvet track suit and chomps her gum. Veruca Salt touches her tiara. It is there, on top of her head, where it should be. Charlie Bucket looks…as awkward as any eleven year old boy who only moments ago was an eleven year old girl might. Wonka stares at himself in a hand-held mirror, stroking his bare chin.

“Thank goodness!” He says. “Everything is back to normal!”

He murmurs something only his own chin can hear.

They should give the man a talking to: you simply cannot play around with people’s lives like that. Only…

Michael is back at the height he should be. And the other children are…

Well no one has fermented.

Everyone keeps their arguments to themselves. Well, everyone except Violet Beauregarde, who laughs and declares:

“Ha! Teavee was fat.”

And then her eyes widen and the smile melts from her face as she says:

“Oh my gawd, I was wh-…”

Mr. Beauregarde places his hand gently over his daughter’s mouth.

“I know, dutchess, I know, but let’s maybe let’s not go there,” he says.

They all take their un-mangled children home. The wrong memories start to fade; to seem like a bad dream. She forgets what it sounds like when an eight inch boy desperately and fruitlessly shrieks to be understood. Mike forgets German entirely.

He never tells her exactly why he said he was sorry. But somehow, Ethel feels like he meant it.


	17. Prompt: More Monster AU

The tour is completed. A new chocolatier has been found. Charlie Bucket has accepted the factory. Willy Wonka only has one little problem.

Well, four, technically, but at the moment he is only frowning at one.

The little demon is still where he left it: arms crossed petulantly across his skinny chest, trapped inside a circle of salt.

Everyone knows that Willy Wonka is the world’s greatest chocolatier, but fewer know that he is also a skilled monster hunter. He supposed they didn’t: the thing knitted together out of Bavarian bits, the father and daughter duo of vampires, the wolf-girl, and the aforementioned demon. If they had, why would they have come?

Well, to challenge him, of course. That is the other possibility. To prove themselves better; to turn the hunter into the hunted. To take his factory as the ultimate insult.

Only: they hadn’t been much of a challenge. The demon really is very small. And he hasn’t gotten any bigger. His horns have not erupted from under his snapback: they remain small and slightly blunt. Claws have not unsheathed from his fingers. He has freed his tail from the confines of his pant’s belt loops, but all it does is thrash behind him, like an annoyed cat’s. He still looks exceptionally young and mostly human. His eyes, of course, were revealed to be utterly black, soul-less pools the moment Wonka plucked his sunglasses from his face and imprisoned the little brute with a salty flick of his wrist, but after the initial tantrum...

The creature looks, frankly, uncomfortable to have been unmasked. He has pulled the brim of his cap lower, and though he tries to glare up defiantly, there is an obvious hint of fear in his inky gaze.

Perhaps there should be.

The chocolatier taps the top of his cane with one finger.

“Why,” he asks the demon, “exactly are you still here?”

The creature spreads his arms wide at the circle surrounding him.

“Uh, duh,” he says, voice still high and prepubescent and not speaking in any sort of tongues. “Can I have my shades back now?”

Hmm.

But it could be some sort of trick. A final attempt to get him to lower his defenses by lulling him into a false sense of security. 

“You’re certainly free to apparate yourself back down to, uh, ‘the deep south’,” Wonka points out. The circle would not prevent that: it only traps the creature in this realm.

The demon stares at him flatly.

“I’m from Idaho,” he says.

Wonka was not aware that Idaho had become hell on earth, but, he supposes, he has not gotten out much recently.

“Well. Wherever,” Wonka allows.

The demon glares harder. But the hint of fear is still there.

“If I could leave, I woulda done it already!” He insists. 

“Wouldn’t you have,” Wonka says, more than asks.

The little demon spreads his arms wide again and makes a ‘duh’ expression. One of his hands passes too close to the circle’s edge and he yanks it back to his chest, clutching his fingers with his other hand.

“I can’t do that stuff!” He says, petulantly. He scratches absently at the back of his hand through his fingerless glove. He strikes the chocolatier as unexpectedly...sincere.

He strolls around the perimeter of the circle, studying his captive. The demon pivots, so his back is never to him. But the creature’s hands are at his sides (or scratching at his forearms). He isn’t concealing anything behind him.

“Why did you come here?” Wonka asks. He’s no longer completely sure what he believes the answer is.

“I won your stupid contest,” the demon sasses back.

The chocolatier resists the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose in frustration.

“Clearly,” he says. “But why-...”

“I just wanted to see the cool stuff!” The demon blurts. There’s a whine at the edge of his voice; a barely audible hint of desperation. “What, you think ‘cause I’m not...not...human, I wouldn’t wanna see a chocolate factory? Your stupid contest rules never said I had to be...whatever.”

The demon’s tiny hands are balled into fists, and his narrowed gaze is fixed on the toes of his sneakers.

Wonka blinks.

“How old are you?” He asks, after a long moment. The creature looks up.

“Twelve,” he answers.”

“And how old are you in human years?” Wonka continues. The demon boy frowns.

“Twelve,” he repeats.

Ah.

That is...unexpected. But it explains why the boy has not transformed into anything more threatening, or why he hasn’t disappeared in a puff of brimstone to the firey pits of hell yet. The Idaho aspect is still somewhat confusing.

“Your mother is certainly free to come and get you,” Wonka points out. He does not add: if she dares. He assumes that is why the...probably succubus has not apparated in to collect her spawn: fear that the trapped...child has become a trap himself.

He hasn’t. Charlie’s victory has left Wonka feeling magnanimous. He’s perfectly willing to let the fiends slink off with their pointed tails tucked between their legs.

Also: twelve. Twelve is...the boy himself would probably insist that it is not young, but it is. It is young enough to leave an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of Wonka’s stomach. Any plots against him were surely not constructed by a twelve year old. The boy is a pawn, at best, and at worst...

Perhaps he did just come to see the ‘cool stuff’. Perhaps Wonka’s reputation does not proceed him as far as he thinks it does. Perhaps the boy (and the others) really were expecting nothing more than a tour.

Perhaps he has...overreacted? But it’s simply too much of a coincidence. No. They are monsters. Monsters do not tour chocolate factories. And any way: this one cheated his way into winning his ticket. ‘Hacked’ it, apparently. He is no innocent. 

But still, the feeling remains, and Wonka taps his cane against the side of his also tapping foot and wishes the mother would appear and remove both of them so that they might no longer be his problem.

“How’s she supposed to do that?” The boy huffs, still scratching at himself, even more vigorously.

“Poof?” Wonka suggests, his hand motions implying that Mrs. Teavee really ought to get on with it and step out of a puff of smoke already.

The boy gapes at him.

“MY MOM IS A HUMAN, YOU CHOCOLATE DOOFUS!” He shrieks, before ripping off one of his fingerless gloves.

The skin on the back of the boy’s hand is red and irritat-...but no, it isn’t. It is red, but it isn’t skin. Scales are erupting along the back of his hand, creeping over his knuckles and towards his fingers, as well as up his wrist. They look as though they have been doing so for some time, and will likely continue, until a pair of fingerless gloves and a hoodie can no longer hide them.

Wonka’s mouth feels dry.

“Your mother is...?”

“OBVIOUSLY,” the boy spits.

Had it been obvious? He had assumed: make-up, and: that hairstyle could have hidden an impressive pair of horns...

“I see,” the chocolatier says, softly. Because he does see, now. He has more than overreacted.

“You shouldn’t scratch,” Wonka continues, crossing into the salt circle. The boy neither flees, nor attacks.

“It itches,” he whines.

“It will, I suspect, until they’ve finished coming in,” Wonka tells him.

The boy glances glumly down at the scales threatening to cover his entire hand. They gleam iridescent reds and oranges. They might be pretty on a fish, or a lizard. But they are on a boy. And soon, Wonka suspects, they will be all over said boy.

“I wish they’d get it over with,” the boy sulks.

“That might make it somewhat hard to go outside,” Wonka points out.

“I don’t go outside now,” the boy snorts. “I don’t have to. I can just Google anything. Whatever. I don’t care.”

He does, Wonka can see, beneath his childish posturing, care.

“My mom’s already totally freaked that somebody might find out,” the boy grumbles. “So what? I don’t care if she’s embarrassed. She’s not the one with a tail.”

“I don’t think,” Wonka says, carefully, “that that is her reason.”

“Sure it is,” the boy continues. “She just wants everything to be all normal, and apple pie. It’s her fault if I’m not. She’s the one who...you know...my dad.”

The boy shudders, then pulls himself together.

“But I knew if I hacked your stupid contest, she’d have to let me come. ‘Cause it’s like: once in a lifetime chance, you know? And I don’t have forever.”

He looks back down at his un-gloved hand.

“Pretty soon, even if I get a once in a lifetime whatever, I still won’t be able to.”

He glances back up. The fear has gone from his black eyes now.

“I didn’t touch anything,” the boy insists. “I didn’t even do anything wrong.”

“You were rather rude,” Wonka points out.

The boy rolls his eyes, which looks strange without pupils.

“I suppose that’s what happens,” Wonka allows, “when you don’t get out much. A lack of social skills.”

“You’re a lack of social skills,” the boy grumbles.

“Sometimes,” Wonka agrees. He reaches into his pocket, and then hands the boy back his sunglasses. The boy grabs at them almost desperately and shoves them back on his face. His shoulders relax.

“Do you know who I am?” Wonka asks.

Confusion wrinkles the boy’s face.

“Willy Wonka?” He guesses, like he doesn’t know why he is being asked such a stupid question.

“Willy Wonka, world famous chocolatier,” Wonka tells him. “And hunter. Of vicious Wangdoodles, Vermicious Knids, vampires, ...demons...”

He waits for that to sink in. It does not take long. The boy is deathly still before him.

“Oh,” he says, all of his sass gone.

“I’m fairly certain your mother is only trying to protect you,” Wonka says.

“What’re you...what’re you gonna do to me?” The boy asks. His voice quivers. Then suddenly his fists are balled again, and his little chin is stuck. “It doesn’t even matter. Do whatever. What’ve I got to look forward to anyway? Stuck in my mom’s basement forever? You can do your worst, Old Man, I’m not scared.”

The boy is certainly scared, but Wonka cannot help but sympathize with his predicament. He’s very smart, to have broken into his computer systems. It’s very easy for a smart child to become very bored.

And for a child who is different from other children to become very lonely.

And for a lonely child to become angry.

The boy has not yet reached his final, demonic form. When he does, Wonka suspects, he could be a serious problem. Could turn into something truly monstrous. But for now...

“I’m letting you go,” Wonka says, scuffing a wide section of the salt circle away with his cane. “For now.”

The boy stares at him. His expression is unreadable. Then he edges past the older man, and slinks sideways to the door, never turning his back on Wonka completely. He pauses, one hand on the doorknob.

“Did you kill those other kids?” He croaks.

“Of course not,” Wonka insists. “They were children.”

At least, he knows that now. And the thought of what he nearly did grips at him; causes the bile to rise in his throat. They have all of them been lucky today.

Mike Teavee nods curtly before leaving. There is the sound of small, sneakered feet scampering away as quickly as they can. Wonka hurries to an emergency phone; instructs the Oompas to free their other guests as quickly and gently as possible.

“Mrs. T.,” he says, greeting the oddly dressed woman as she ushers him into her house. She has only aged a little in the nearly six years since the factory tour. Wonka himself has not appeared to age at all.

Mrs. Teavee wrings her hands.

“Mr. Wonka,” she says, nervously. “He’s...well, you know.”

Her eyes dart towards the basement door.

“There’s no need to worry,” Wonka assures her. “I’m perfectly capable of handling him.”

He descends into the darkness of the suburban basement cautiously. The smell of brimstone hangs in the air. At the bottom of the staircase, he holds up his cane and thrusts. It smacks against something solid. Loudly.

There is a roar. A pair of ominous red eyes glows in the darkness. They are all Wonka can see, other than a set of sharp, gleaming white teeth. He thrusts with his cane again.

This time he does not miss the light switch.

Michael stretches his arms and finishes yawning. His eyes adjust in the sudden light, fading back to their usual black. He scratches at his scaled chin with his well manicured claws.

“Ugh, mom, what time is it?” He groans.

“Good morning, Michael,” Wonka says, with fake cheer. “So pleased you’ve finally decided to join us.”

Mike is blinking at him now. He’s tangled in the sheets of a futon, still wearing the clothes he had on yesterday. His blue t-shirt contrast with the red scales that cover him from nearly head to toe, with the exception of his scalp, from which his horns and wild black hair grows, and the palms of his hands. He looks utterly demonic, but he has for some time now, and it is almost hard to picture him as looking anything but. Almost. He remembers the boy on the tour. And he remembers when the boy passed the point of no return, and ceased to be able to pass as a human being. It had been...difficult. But he had not been alone.

The room around Mike is a mess. Sneakers and gaming accessories and unidentifiable bits of machinery are strewn everywhere. He lunges for his phone, which is tangled in the sheets as well.

“Oh fu-...udge, I’m late,” he exclaims.

“Yes you are,” Wonka agrees. “You are late. You are very, very, late for work young man.”

“Mom, why didn’t you wake me up!” Mike demands.

Mrs. Teavee has descended into Mike’s domain as well.

“I’m sorry, honey, you just looked so peaceful,” she says.

Mike groans again and flops back against his pillows.

“Up all night gaming, I presume?” Wonka asks.

Mike sits up, frowning.

“What? No. I was working on your codes,” he insists. He reaches for a tablet on the table beside his sofa/bed. Wonka swipes through several pages of work. And then several more. And more.

“Is this finished?” He asks. “The first pass isn’t even due until next week.”

“I was in the zone,” Mike says, shrugging his scaly shoulders.

Wonka cannot tear his eyes away from the tablet. It is, like all the work Mike does, good. Very, very good. This will push the production timeline forward at least a month.

“You,” he commands. “Go back to sleep.”

“No way,” Mike argues, climbing out of his sheet cocoon and shoving his scaley feet into a pair of sneakers. “I wanna see the look on Steve’s face when he sees that artistic masterpiece.

They are in Wonka’s glass elevator only a short time later and after only a brief nagging from Mrs. Teavee about the state of Michael’s room.

“You coulda just summoned me,” Mike points out, during their short commute.

“You don’t always wear pants to bed,” Wonka points out.

“Tail,” Mike says. “But also: fair.”

At the factory, Oompas go about their business. Mike waves at one the moment they have departed the elevator.

“Steve!” He calls out, making his way over to the small, orange haired man. His tail swishes happily behind him.

A bat flaps beside Wonka’s head, and then turns into a blond Russian girl.

“Veruca,” he greets her. She beams at him. Her fangs gleam. They are sharper than Michael’s.

His demonic employee has apparently finished rubbing his genius in Steve’s face, and is now trying very hard not to look obvious as he watches the head of social media style her beard. The wolf-girl notices anyway.

“Play your cards right, Teavee,” Violet Beauregarde purrs, “and maybe I’ll let you watch me brush my legs.”

Mike’s black eyes widen, and Violet dissolves into giggles.

“I ain’t even playing with you though,” Wonka can hear her tell him, and Mike sidles closer to her. He hopes briefly and fruitlessly that Mrs. Teavee has had The Talk with her son, so that he does not have to. 

(He is probably going to have to.)

He stops watching them. His factory defies explanation. His workers have long been fantastical. He had not expected his Golden Ticket contest to result in four of the most fantastical yet.

But you cannot spell fantastical without fantastic. And that is just the sort of candy Wonka makes.


End file.
